You might try talking to someone in your local city, e.g. airport, city ticket office, or local sales office. The CTO or ATO should be able to direct you to a local sales rep for UA. I'm not sure what they will do, but it would not harm you to ask. Also you could give her sme of your 500 mile upgrade certs, and have her try to use these. It might only work 30% of the time or less, but some upgrades are better than no upgrades. Those who ask are the one's who often get something. Case and point, I was just in DSM, delayed overnight due to weather, and got two confirmed one-class one-segment north America upgrades. Those that did not ask got nothing, zero, etc. Before I was elite, I could still upgrade occasionally just by happening to ask the right person.