There is no mystery or conspiracy about ST. ALL commercial passengers are looked after first. ALL op upgrades due to oversales are dealt with before staff are looked at. Only when all the commercial passengers are dealt with are staff even considered, they are then loaded in precedence and seniority in the space available. It is BA policy not to upgrade commercial passengers into a class they have not paid for unless there are operational reasons to do so - like oversales profiles, then members of the BAEC will be looked at first again in order of commercial importance to BA - so Prems first then Gold Card holders etc. Most frequent flyers are well aware of this and there are websites dedicated to the various FF programmes.