I just received completely unexpected battlefield upgrades on both legs of a EWR-LAX-EWR trip this week (unexpected as there was only 1 seat left up front on both flights and would have thought there would have been a few Plats ahead of me). I am Gold and was a traveling on a B fare. On the outbound I was #2 to check-in and was #1 on the return. The return LAX-EWR upgrade was especially nice as eqp was the 762.

I'm not sure if this is new corporate policy, but neither the PC agent or the gate agent in EWR would tell me where I ranked on the standby list.