Thanks for your quick reply! This year so far, I rode to SE Asia twice on award tickets. My paid tickets so far this year are Europe twice and Caribbean once. That means I've only earned about 22K in EQM. Counting 2 more trips to Europe and one more to the Caribbean, I'll likely get less than 75K in EQM this year. I'm starting to think that flying on award tickets to SE Asia was a big mistake. I used a bunch of miles, and didn't earn any EQM for those trips.

Maybe that answers my question: I should only use my award miles for upgrades, not award tickets, so I earn more status... Does that sound right?