I don’t think it’s IT failure. The status from the time of booking sometimes carries over as pointed out and helps a few people.

Years ago shortly before my (Cessna) HON status expired I booked on an inaugural LX flight to SIN as part of a group. Only Economy tickets were available for the group as all Business seats on the outbound had been allocated to politicians and media people.

Fortunately for some a strike in BRU cancelled a couple of flights and 3 Business seats opened up last minute. My BP showed my now expired status and my upgrade waitlist cleared ahead of others as predicted by people in the know.