Actually the better way to ask this is to get the timings of when the request was phoned in and when the flight was. The upgrade window for pass products is "the day before" and in theory you could be close to 48 hours (but obviously less than 48 hours) out and get the upgrade. If the OP was required to surrender a cert for the upgrade than it was a standard benefit of having status on AC, the right fare class and proper cert and had nothing to do with pass product upgrade benefit.