Yes the dedicated check in lines are nice (I'm only a lowly UA Premier but it helps) and even the lame UA airport waitlist policy has helped me at LAX in the middle of a horrendous rainstorm in getting on a flight before some obnoxious Angelenos. But what I tell friends in advising them to qualify for elite is "at Premier they start treating you like a human being, anything below that and you're cattle, anything above and they start acting really nice" :-)

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