Although I'd bet most elites hit the EQM bucket first, with segment elites and EQP elites likely in the single digit percentages each, the same can be said of UA and DL, and they only have two buckets. If you bought an F seat BOS-LAX and an O-coded economy seat LAX-BOS, as an example, you would get 2611 EQMs each way on AA. You would receive 1.5 EQPs for the F seat but only 0.5 EQPs for the O seat. This would give you 5222 EQMs and EQPs for this trip. If you bought the same on UA or DL (ignore for a moment that DL doesn't fly the route nonstop), you would receive 1.5x EQMs for the F seat, and 1x EQMs for the bottom fare coded seat, giving you a total of 6527.5 (rounding not important so I'll simply be mathematically exact) EQMs. This flight pattern gets you closer to qualifying for the next elite level on DL or UA than it does on AA. It removes any incentive to buy cheaper F fares if one normally flies the GNOQS 0.5 EQP fares (such as myself), and hurts the corporate travelers who book at different times, as advance booking may allow for a 0.5 EQP fare (for example for a conference that can be scheduled well in advance), and close-in booking (for that emergency client meeting) may require a full-Y fare, or J/F class fare.