My clearance experience is that you never get CPUs anymore, even as a 1K. Maybe I am just flying bad routes.

Adding a note that there are a lot of 752s that day, and UA RM seems to disagree with the "morning flights might be easy" assessment; at least as of now pretty much every flight is Z0 that day, even the 6am 752. My guess is that early morning ones will level out eventually as I can't see that much premium traffic wanting to get to the airport at the crack of dawn on New Year's Day.

^^^That would be me. I'm on UA 712 departing at 7:02 PM on a 737-9. I'll just plan to be hungover and watch terrible movies for a few hours :)

This is probably the case. I get a fairly good percentage, and I'm only Silver. I tend to get them when flying for pleasure rather than business, and the routes and times don't match up with frequent business travel.

That's a long way to fly in a soda can

Meh. Trade a hot meal for direct aisle access, it's not so bad. The only real risk factor is UAX ops at SFO.

Compare it to 319s where I managed to miss an RPU on a Friday night.

This 1k had his CPU clear on the late night IAD-BOS on 10/30...but still waiting on the CPU from TPA-IAD....8 seats still free on that one.

My return MSP-SFO (a 738) was F9 PN9 R5 I3 at the window; one pax CPUed and then the computer had a three-hour coughing fit. When it was done, it CPUed the rest of the 1Ks and the flight was F5 P5 PN0.

thats still less than 4 hours though, right? doesn’t seem that bad on an E75.

I was was looking up awards with a YVR-ORD segment - that’s 4+ hours, and one option at one point was a non-stop AC flight on a CRJ-705. I had no idea a CRJ could even make that kind of range.

Girlfriend, Premier Silver, was #1 on YVR-SFO, only to get bumped back to #2 by LEA,P. That would be the only name I'd be able to smile at when getting passed on the CPU list :)

I’ve cleared twice this year as a Gold. Both were flight 744 DEN-LAX on Saturday afternoon as part of a DEN-LAX-LHR itinerary. Too bad it’s the short leg but something is better than nothing. A colleague that is Silver also cleared on tomorrow’s flight.

Surprisingly, this week's business roundtrip DEN-TPA on Sunday-Thursday cleared with CPUs in both directions. First time this year that has happened. I've been conditioned to expect to not clear any more, and am delighted when it happens on its own.

Cleared the CPU on a 319 SFO-SAN this morning, and on an S fare no less. They made me sweat it though - #1 on the list from start to finish, with 3 unsold seats, but still didn't clear until 45 minutes before departure. Couldn't get any takers on the $99 buy-up I guess. F cabin was 100% upgrades.

Upgraded to Gold by Premiere Desk and CPU ten minutes later for tomorrow's flight!
 

After many years as a silver or what used to just be Premier I think with PMUA, have finally punched through to gold this year. Should have qualified after my flight from LAX to IAH on Sunday but the miles still hadn't posted as of this morning so called the premiere MP line and they manually adjusted my status so I'd have it for IAH to DCA tomorrow morning. They couldn't add the miles so just the status was upgraded and miles will post eventually. Low and behold, ten minutes later I get an email that I got a CPU for tomorrow's flight! Gotten a few of these over the years as a silver (1-2 or less per year) and of course always at the gate. My first flight as a gold and I get the CPU at just under t-24. We can complain all we want about UA sometimes, but when things work they really do work, and both agents I spoke with today at MP and reservations (to update the status info in the PNR) were really incredibly friendly and helpful. After I explained the situation of wanting the new status to the MP agent she began by simply stating how she could she that I'd been a loyal MP member for many many years and that my request was indeed a good and fair one and she'd be happy to help me get gold set up for tomorrow. Just thought I'd share this with all the negativity that goes around here sometimes. Let's remember the good things that UA does as well. Looking forward to my first year of gold now and finally no more having to wait for E+ till t-24.

Very good. IAH to IAD or DCA seems to be tough for upgrades as a Gold, too, at least from the times I've flown that route in recent months.