Are you talking about United automatically processing partner elite rebooking in the case of irrops? Or just that a partner elite would have access to either a J check-in desk or a United Club, thus getting to a human faster than a non-elite could?

When I was a native UA 1K, I thought they generally did a very good job with rebooking during irrops - both automatically (I'd get a voicemail) and when I had to talk to an agent. I just don't know how far this benefit extends into the partner elite universe...

As both A3 Blue and Gold, I've almost always been able to get an E+ seat at the gate if one frees up as they're upgrading the native elites. I don't think that's stated anywhere. The system *won't* assign E+ to partner elites, not even at OLCI, but gate agents don't seem to mind doing it.