Had a positive experience with YBYL today.

AC1, 77W 36/39 J, 24/24 PY. Was 7th for J, 3 upgrading from PY, 4 from Y (including me). 4th for PY (check-in agent said 2 SE MM, 1 75k; I am 50k). In other words, I get cucked if nothing changes from this list.

Boarding comes, as expected, the 6 people infront of me clear, presumably 3 into J and 3 into PY. I am now first on both J and PY to be upgraded (obviously I only get a participation award at this point).

I board as part of zone 2, asked the agent if there's any use waiting for upgrade. Obvious answer is no, and he told me as much I was SOL. At this point I'm really hoping for a miracle but accept such is life.

Walking past the J minicabin, I see 10D is marked inop (might be important here). Walking into PY cabin, I see on cowtool my seat on the map showed as available in Y and thought "well that's weird, I'm clearly boarded and on the flight". Then I get a text saying waitlist cleared. Yay!

The relevant part here: a FA found me 15 minutes after I settled into my J seat and said she was looking for me to tell me I was upgraded. She couldn't find me in Y, so she assumed I got the notification that I was upgraded after I boarded.

So today, I boarded and didn't lose. Really happy I got upgraded from Y Flex to J as 50K (to me, an achievement given how full my flight was).

What I'm curious is whether the inop seat played a role here. I assume someone misconnected, and with the "you can only be upgraded once" policy I assume that there's no way anyone winning the upgrade to PY would be retroactively given J. Is this true?

​​​​​I'm also wondering, had J been 36/40, would I have ended up in PY, and whoever was 8th on the J upgrade list would have gotten my J upgrade instead?