I have no real insight here, but my experience as Plat is that if I want to book a last-minute J award, they will try to find me a seat. And I would assume that my sort-of-waitlisted last-minute-award clears before the upgrade waitlist because otherwise it would hardly ever clear at all. (As these both come from the U bucket, logic would be that they won't clear a last-minute award if they have people waitlisted. But that seems not to be the case.)

What I mean is that when I call and ask to fly the day after tomorrow and return four days later, or whatever, they will look at the loads, give me tips like "I'd rather put you on the later flight / could you fly back one day earlier, the day you want probably won't clear" etc. and once we have found something we agree on, Janica contacts the other department and the flights are cleared.