I was on the waitlist for SFO-CDG (#926), which had quite a few open seats in F (I had a saver award F ticket, which had me flying SFO-ORD-CDG). I called every other day during the final week, and was always told that things looked good, but there was no way of knowing when seats would be released. The night before my flight, it was the same... in fact, she said it likely wouldn't clear until after my original flight left, and that it would be risky, but I could always skip it and cross my fingers...

The morning of the flight I called again... still nothing. So we're on the way to the airport, literally coming up to the junction where you have to choose between the International & Domestic terminals (relevant because the SFO-ORD-CDG routing would begin domestic, while SFO-CDG would depart from International).

I have no idea if it was the simple desperation of explaining that I was at such a veritable crossroads or what, but she cleared me within seconds of the offramp. Seriously.

This meant that I was at the airport a good three hours earlier than need be, but I had a fair amount of work I could get done and the F lounge at SFO is quite nice!