I am Silver and used points (25k each) to book 3 one way tickets for my wife, kids and dog to fly SMF-IAH-JAX. 6 weeks out the SMF planes are 95% full. I can only get 2 seats together in the last rows. Is there anything that I can do other than spending $300 for E+ which is currently 95% empty. They are all small so E+ is a waste for them.

This would not be an issue if Silvers were allowed to take E+ more than 24 hours before takeoff. It is too bad they don't worry about the downstream affect of all of these new changes.

thanks