I'm with Vulcan - I'll earn 1K status on United next week, having spent about $5,700 on leisure fares. In fact, I could have cut it below $5,000 if I had gotten rid of some of the "expensive" (per mile) domestic trips and added another Hong Kong (at under $500 for an e-fare).

So I would definitely lose if United went to taking $$ revenue into account, but I would certainly understand if they did so. Then again, somebody referred to an AA thread where AA was loosening up their Exec Plat qualifications, so maybe the trend is away from counting revenue.