Something wierd has been going on with UA's upgrade software recently. For my wife's flight last week, when the upgrade window came, her status switched from "Upgrade requested" to "Upgrade Denied" (not waitlisted), which I've never seen before. I called for her, and the agent said that they had been having problems with the waitlists, and that she couldn't do anything to help. I called back the next day, and the agent was then able to confirm the upgrade on the spot, and sounded as puzzled as I was about the upgrade denied message...

Dan