I almost always receive wonderful service from the flight crew on UA, and rarely see abuses of the the upgrade system. Actually on almost every flight I have taken in the past few months first has been full, with only an occasional SA slipping in at the last minute

When abuses do occur, however, they do great great harm to the public relations image of UA. IMHO, they should always be reported immediately with a report including the flight date, number, seat number of the SA who was upgraded over a passenger and, if possible, the name/s of the gate agent/s involved.

Actually UA employees should also work actively to report and to encourage passengers to report these abusive incidents. Everytime abuse of the systems occurs it angers passengers and drives another nail into the UA coffin.

I do from time to time see FAs spending way too much time chatting with their SA buddies rather doing their job and that is annoying. This usually happens on shorter flights, however.