If you're not prepared to gamble at the airport, getting E+ seats in advance is a bit of a nightmare. I've decided not to take 3 long haul trips with United this year due to their current E+ policy, going with US and Air NZ instead.

In all three occasions, I was booking the ticket quite late, and E- was totally stacked on UA.com with virtually no seats available. Although I was told I could probably get to the airport and get a decent seat by waving around my Gold card, the risk of ending up in an E- 'super-middle' seat put me off the gamble.

As others have mentioned, I would have bought the E+ pass, but again, due to the T&Cs which state mileage needs to be credited to your MP account, I decided not to bother.

I plan to ditch AE at year-end and move back to UA, mainly because of this... right now I fly UA routes more than AC, so being able to use E+ would be genuinely useful. Of course, I'll build up 25k on other Star carriers, before I take my first UA flight...