From my 800,000 miles travelling United experience, UA will offer Complimentary upgrade to Premier, Premier Exec and 1K when Economy is oversold. It is actually a good thing if you are a United Premier or above fly Y class when the flight are overbooked in Economy. No money needed for upgrade. I was lucky to have numerous flight upgraded completely free of charge at check in. On couple occasion, they even refunded the upgrade certificate I used back to my mileage plus account!! (terrific act)
Do a search on Flyertalk UA forum you will find out.
ExpertFlyer is another good tool to show flight availability and seat map but you need to pay monthly fee ($5?)
During low season SYD-LAX or SFO, it is NOT unusual to see UA loads in the low hundreds, this has always been the case since route launch. Australia route perform very well during peak seasons but failed to reach average load factor in low season.
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