I was using AS miles to book a SFO-HKG-BNE in business class. The AS agent tried to manually book it because when using the automatic system to book it the system just kept "loading" (her words) but not giving a result. (because CX did not confirm the request, I think)

Somehow she managed to manually push it thru. But CX would not confirm the business seats requested but automatically downgraded it to PE seats? That was the AS agent said, it looked CX only returned PE seats. AS system automatically charged PE cost both in miles and in $. I dont think it is AS agent error to book in PE because she clearly knew it was for business class, as we even had disagreement on the miles cost (one award vs two awards). Also after she saw only PE miles were charged, she tried to take more miles (the balance to meet the J seat cost) to "upgrade" the booking to J but the system would not let her. Then she went to check with "global dept" and returned to tell me we were now on Waitlist for J seats. AS global dept would confer with CX and it would take a few days to know the final outcome. If CX confirms it I will receive an email from AS "Global Dept" and will pay the balance (both miles and a few extra $)

Long story short, the reservation now shows up in My Booking on CX site as Waitlisted without tickets, in Business class on both segments. There is NO PE booking. Meanwhile there is also no AS eticket confirmation email, nor the booking shows up on AS site despite AS system took the PE miles cost and charged the CC.

What I am most curious is, since CX does not even allow waitlist on its own standard award, why would CX allow partner booking waitlist ?