Wow, this was only my second post on FT, but I'm blown away by everyone's responses. This has been incredibly helpful, and I'm sure others with similar questions will appreciate the info in this thread (if search can find it...)

I agree that VX is a good alternative, but the 32" pitch in non-exit/non-bulkhead rows makes it a bit tight (though it does have both power ports and TVs, which is nice).

So one thing I'm unclear about is what fares are eliglbe for upgrades. It seems any fare you normally find on United.com or Kayak.com is not Y or B. I did a special search for refundable (Y?) fares on United.com and they seemed to be priced about 2x normal economy. Do businesses get special deals on these tickets that we don't see on United.com? Otherwise, I'm not sure how I could justify spending 2x as much for a flight it's unlikely I would cancel...

Also, I'm not quite sure how to interpret the results of seatcounter. It seems like showing the seats available for a flight far away doesn't exactly tell you much. Is there any site that shows you availabilities for flights in the past so you can figure out how likely upgrades were? Are there any guidelines for what days/times are easiest to upgrade?

Finally, I'll be flying on Air India to Hyderabad next month and would love to get those 16,000 miles, but Air India doesn't officially join the *A until next year. Do you think I could call United and reason with them? Another alternative is I can use a Luftansa FF# and get miles on that--can I then shift those miles to UA afterwards?

Oh and one last question--is it worth it to get one of these United credit cards that give you 25k miles when you start? I have a Jetblue Amex but could use a MC/Visa and that would get me quite close to 1P (with my 10k miles already) so I could start doing double bonus. I assume these miles do in fact count for elite status?

Thanks again everyone,
Noah