Originally Posted by SEA_Tigger
Your seats will remain until such time as UA's computers need to do a "seat sweep" (equipment change, etc.) at which time you will be kicked to the back of the bus.
I'm not sure this is correct -- my experience has been that the status you have with a given record/ticket at the time of ticketing will stay with the record. My experience is based on an SFO-LHR trip I booked back in Februrary when I was a premEx before getting dropped back down to regular Premier. For that trip,
1. my boarding passes had "Premier Executive" printed on them.
2. my seat assignment was changed _into_ an exit row at some time in July (i.e. after my "real" status had changed)
3. I got an operational upgrade on the return flight, which is much more likely as a 1P than as a 2P.
Also, others have noted that E+ isn't available upon _gaining_ premier status until the MP number is deleted and re-entered.
So based on that, I'm predicting that if you book all of your travel before Feb 29, you should be good to go in E+,
However, you won't get the mileage bonuses... (I still only got the 25% bonus for that flight).
Dan