Unfortunately, I bought ~3 weeks before departure. On 2 of the 5 segments in my RT, E- was booked full already, on a third, only middle seats were left. Although it's a family trip, I've got some meetings in the middle of it for one of my jobs, and had to wait 'til they were confirmed, talk to the guy who replaced me as their flight coordinator about reimbursement limits, yadda yadda.
Oh, of course not. I just dropped to Silver in February, and after this trip will be one flight away from regaining Gold. I still get stuck on non-*A carriers now and then, though (flying for a nonprofit, they like whoever's cheap) so I don't know if I'll be able to make it to Platinum this year.
Nor am I expecting to get into F on UA235 DEN-LAX, since it's a little 12F A320 with 10 seats already taken. That said, those are the shortest flights of my trip, so if I only manage to grab E+ 24 hours out, my family will all survive.
I've got
significantly better odds on the once-daily LAX-ITO (UA1004) and the once-weekly ITO-SFO (UA1274), since anything involving ITO is pretty elite-light and they're both already full in E-. SFO-EWR (UA429) is iffy - not quite as wide open as the ITO legs, but still enough space in F and E+ that I'm hoping to at least escape from our current separate middle seats in E-!
Thanks for the answers about international-config 752s turning up on domestic routes. First time I've run into one myself - maybe I should try flying to Florida sometime. (Never been.)