Originally Posted by
sholnay
Getting back on track, OP asked if he/she could book other times to increase chances. I'd anecdotally, from personal experience, say that this doesn't increase odds and it would probably be very difficult to get any sort of stat on this outside of tapping in to United's stats directly.
You're wrong.
If you have flexibility in your schedule and are willing to put in the effort to find the right flights,
* GPU upgrades can absolutely be confirmed. That's my experience and that of many others in this forum. There's an entire thread on that point.
GPU Upgrade Success 2017.
I feel for the business travelers who have to fly specific flights on specific days, because that's where GPU become a low odds proposition.
This "GPUs are worthless" debate has been done to death and it's just really old hearing the same old complaints over and over.
*And so to further answer OP's question, you need to spend time searching, check the loads on specific flights (
United Flight Status Tool), identify your candidates, watch them and see how the loads change, try to book into open R, but go ahead and waitlist if the inventory movement suggests R is going to open.