It seems so far you can already relog in a queue and not lose position. (Or maybe it just doesn’t tell you you do, dunno.)
Queuing a different character would make the system even more unreliable, because you pretty much have no time at all and immediately have to log out and to the other char to make it before the timeout.
The game can distinguish wanted (logoff) and unwanted disconnect, though.
Maybe it is just the cleanup in case someone forgot? Because the group finder often has old 1-player groups because the player forgot to disband the queue, and eventually the system auto-terminates those queues. I had that happen the other day and it was actually because I forgot to cancel, so I didn’t mind.
It was 20 or 30 minutes. I don’t remember the exact time.
Instead of queueing a character, you’d be queueing your account with a specific character.
If they can’t do that, because it’s a horrific mess to manage and a logic nightmare basically, and not because of some technical issue, they are incompetent.