So I had to book a TATL Award in C for Mrs. Smashr and I for this December -- a fair bit less lead time than I normally allow. Fortunately I was able to find reasonably good flights with decent XC availability.

I did end up waitlisted for the outbound (767), with all other segments confirmed in C. Now, I figured flying TATL on Dec 26, I would not be competing with too much paid C traffic, and if nothing else the FFCC list would work for me, so I bit the bullet and ticketed it last night. Low and behold it cleared out this morning! (After I had been watching it for several days with the itineraries on hold with no changes).

Either:
1) I got incredibly lucky to have it clear a mere 12 hours after ticketing
2) One of the wonderful (US Based) agents I spoke with put in a IM request for me (Something I thought they only did for GS members)
3) The practitioners of the dark arts of Inventory Management really do pay attention to award bookings and flight loads. (Especially completely empty flights like this one)

Either way, major ^^^ to UA.