Many thanks to all for your suggestions. I do hear the upper deck on UA 747 is lovely :-)

I am actually looking into flying from east cost via ORD to PVG for leisure trips - i.e., using the miles w/airline to book free biz award tickets to PVG. I was just checking both AA and UA websites for redeeming miles in biz class: cannot seem to find saver biz class award tickets on UA but AA has lots of such availability.

Any insights as to whether (and why) UA itself has far less availability of biz class reward seats to PVG?

Thanks again!