the free UA-partner-award tickets for member of my family in 98/99 were all to touristic places and some even on heavy traffic dates, and all in International first class. I made the reservations about 8 months in advance.

january-98: on SUPERBOWL Friday: Zurich-Washington DC - San Francisco - Santa Ana (Orange County): I had to make the concession to fly to SNA instead of San Diego (no real problem) - San Francsco - Washington DC - Zurich.

november-98: the week before and after THANKSGIVING: Brussels - Washington DC - San Francisco - Seattle - San Francisco - Denver - Aspen - Denver - Washington DC - Brussel (I made the concession to fly from Brussels instead of Frankfurt, no problem as the free SR-ticket to Brussels costs the same amount of miles as Frankfurt).

february/march-99: Frankfurt-Chicago-Vancouver-San Francisco-Denver-Aspen-Denver-Chicago-Frankfurt (concession: detour Vancouver-San Francisco-Denver instead of direct flight Vancouver-Denver; and I was waitlisted with different possibilities for about 2 months before this segment was fine).

For travel in International First Class (with only 14 seats available in total), for only 120'000 miles in total (160'000 ./. 1K-voucher = 120'000 for 2 persons) I must say that my family feels pampered by United for the last 14 months.

In add on my october round-the-world-trip on every segment of all 5 partner-airlines the staralliance-upgrade-vouchers worked out fine (and the upgrades with miles on the UA segments too) - and the segments were popular ones: LHR-Rio, Rio-Miami-San Francisco, San Francisco-Taipeh, Taipeh-Bangkok, Bangkok-Delhi, Delhi-Copenhague, Copenhague-Zurich.

[This message has been edited by Rudi (edited 02-17-99).]