Since I was the aforementioned friend flying yesterday, here's what happened to us :
We were booked on the 17h45 flight which was cancelled due to to few pax. We got rebooked on the 19h45 flight, no upgrade, no apologies, no lounge pass, nothing.
Wife (three months' pregnant) was livid and understandably so.

Ended up using two of these foolish GUV's to put ourselves in 1A/B.
Needless to say some nasty lounge hopping will be done for my next * longhaul.

On the bright side we were only 3 in C with a real meal (yay !) and I got extra food and bottles of wine to bring back home, one of the nicest cabin crews I had on BD so far (but then again, they're DUB-based).

UTA