Originally Posted by mherdeg

A third, creative option: at the 24 hour mark when you saw that you were not upgraded, you could have checked for R availability on EWR-MUC or IAD-MUC; if there were immediately confirmable upgrade space, you could have made a same-day confirmed change onto those flights (possibly for free) and applied a miles + copay upgrade instantly, possibly bypassing other people on the upgrade waitlist. The UA system allows sniping; you'd be a fool not to take it, even if it is at the expense of other passengers.