I bought the UA ticket today because:
1. I prefer the times of the flights to be as late in the day as possible.
2. I need to earn the UA miles.
3. I prefer that I can choose my seat, plus there's the possibility that the 777 aircraft will have been updated by April 2013.
I felt that I couldn't hesitate any longer because I didn't see it going back down to 1049 since I had started tracking it. Waiting for a sale made me too anxious because I know that sale fares don't always work out for the dates and times I want.
I figured that if the UA crew is not as nice as they may be on VS, I'm never much in need of help and I'm going to really try to sleep through the whole flight or as much as possible.
I agree that you can't compare one coach seat with any other economy airline on a long haul flight because it is uncomfortable any way you think about it for 10+ hours.
I bought the insurance add-on to protect myself from any possible issues since my fare is nonrefundable.
Thank you everyone for your opinions on VS.
If I have anything extraordinarily interesting happen on my trip with the flights, I'll post it when I return sometime in May 2013.