My recommendation is look for confirmable space and be as flexible as you can with your route / schedule. If you are fixed to flying Sunday night IAH-LHR, you won't get much from them, and in that case it's not even worth flying UA unless they're the cheapest. But if you move your schedule a bit and/or are willing to add a connection, it is possible to get good value from them.

My 1K friend has 500+ PP expiring tonight.

Can someone confirm for me the PP it would cost for a routing IAD-HNL-GUM-FUK -> is that just 20?
(Dulles - Honolulu - Guam - Fukoka, Japan). None of those are considered long haul polaris I believe.

Similar. Frustrating to see 360 plus points expiring; I travel for business and primarily domestically, and have applied to almost every itinerary mid-con or trans-con and barely had anything clear. The expiration just rubs that in my face! Ha.

Oh well, it's life these days and us business travelers in economy know that it's the life we have (and it's also why I book the best itinerary for travel regardless of airline at this point). Hit Gold on Delta for the first time while re-qualifying for 1k. No fault of United in making money where they can.

Request extensions - I know of people who could extend them until mid-year.

(Mine were automatically extended)

Is it too late now?

No harm trying!!

If my friend's friend applied PlusPoints to my res but then one of the overwater segments is being cancelled, any way I can avoid having her to reapply the request again? Like if the system automatically reaccommodates me on another flight, will it transfer the request to the new segment without reauthenticating the account?

day of travel irops usually just re-accommodate into the J cabin in any fare class. Future flights it is YMMV IME; my guess is with +Ps not from your account it will likely need to go via re-deposit and re-applying

PP UPGRADE WAITLIST... HOW ARE FLYERS LISTED? (Sorry... Imagine this has been asked several times but don't have time to go thru 152 FlyerTalk pages...)

I know 1K would be ranked above Platinum... but what about 1K on regular economy ticket vs Platinum booked in Premium Economy both waiting for J?
What about Platinum originally paid for regular economy but paid upgrade to Premium Economy (now showing fare code A) vs 1K in regular economy both waiting for J?

Platinum in premium economy (paid upgrade or underlying ticket) would be ranked above 1k in economy.

Anyone in premium economy waitlisted for biz class will be above 1K booked in economy.

Only GS booked in economy is above people booked in premium economy on upgrade list..

More specifically, passengers on GS instruments, regardless of status, will be ahead of PE on the upgrade list.

Bit of a dilemma. Waitlisted with 20 PP for SFO - RDU direct later this week. It's showing PZ1 on UA.com and if you search for PlusPoint availability it also validates it's available. Still sitting on the WL so I messaged into United via the app and specifically cited the PZ1 showing on UA.com, they both claimed it was phantom space but a couple hours later it is still showing up.

Two questions:

1) Is it possible that it is in fact phantom space (I've never encountered phantom PZ space on a direct flight)?

2) If it's likely to be legitimate space, any reason not to cancel my PP request and just immediately re-request to snag the PZ1?

1) It's not phantom space.
2) The only possible reason is that I once did this, and it appeared to trigger the waitlist to run, but obviously without me on it. However, I have also had other experiences since then in which it didn't run when I cancelled request. So I would go ahead and just do it.