I'm also a Fed Flyer with status....and was sooooo very happy that we're not subjected to Untied on the SEA-DCA city pair. That said, my agency also issues 3 days out, which makes upgrades unlikely, but even worse, last time I flew for work (SEA-ORD and back) I was in a middle seat as all of the window and aisle seats was gone!

In the early days of SEA-DCA upgrades were much easier to come by. I remember with fondness being paged over the intercom and told to move to seat 2C. It gave me much joy to be publicly upgraded in front of 5 people from my office.

As DCA-SEA mentions, free bag check can be used to justify lower cost when AS matches a fare, but I've been granted free bag allowance when travelling on a government fare on both Frontier and American.