United is also unlikely to upgrade anyone too far in advance as they will try to sell as many Polaris and PE seats as possible. Then they will oversell PE tickets if they think Polaris sales might lag, knowing they can accommodate the oversell in Polaris. United will also sell upgrades to Polaris outright if PE oversell still not enough. I would be surprised if 3 no-status (or even Silver status) get upgrades to Polaris during peak season. One GS or 1K traveling with family will eat up available upgrade seats. I wouldn’t suggest to family they should expect to be sitting up front. PE is definitely nice fallback relative to coach, though.