Just an extra data point: I qualified for 1P for the first time in early December, and today I was pleased to find a letter in the mail from Mileage Plus containing a shiny new gold-tinted card... expiry date January 2012!

This is actually extremely useful for me because I'm off to Switzerland next week and this Star Gold card is gonna come in very handy.

Still, there's something awfully screwy going on if United is happy to print up cards that expire in three weeks but hasn't yet figured out what to do with everyone else's cards.