My partner and I are doing a business class Australia trip in February with a night in Hong Kong. I booked him on an award ticket back in March (as soon as the flights were loaded). I waited to book my matching Circle Pacific until last month, not wanting to spend the $5300 that far ahead. I was able to get matching flights in D class except for one QF flight HKG-SYD. On that flight, QF is showing J9 C9 D0. So he's ticketed on the QF flight, I'm waitlisted on the QF flight, and I'm booked on a CX flight that leaves an hour and a half earlier.

QF tells me they can't see where I am in the queue, and their revenue management people won't look at the flight to consider clearing the waitlist until two weeks out. The AA RTW desk says I can ticket my circle pacific with the QF flight waitlisted, but I have to either do it as a paper ticket, or drop the waitlisted flight, issue it as an e-ticket, and then add the waitlisted flight back in, which will lose my place in the queue.

I can't switch him to match my flight because there's no award availability.

Questions:

1. how stupid was I to wait to book my matching circle pacific?
2. what are the odds I'll be able to get on the QF flight?
3. what are the odds there will be upstairs seats for us if I do get on the QF flight? (we're actually going HKG-BNE, but I booked it HKG-SYD, SYD-BNE just to get a 747 since we love the upper deck)
4. are there any drawbacks to a paper ticket for this?
5. any advice?