Originally Posted by televisor

Not that hard IMHO, as long as you don't buy purely advance fares on long domestic flights.

One sane scenario is 5-6 TATL trips from the west coast, that's 10-12k PQM per RT, and at least $1000 per trip (prices are usually higher than that).

Or if we start by calculating the cpm costs directly: 50k PQM at 12cpm gets you into Gold. Mileage run tickets tend to be around 4cpm, and those are typically advance fares over long distances. Most people will tend to book flights closer in (i.e. more cpm). Moreover shorter flights also result in higher cpm. E.g. I often buy "cheap" advance fares ona 700 PQM flight, those still end up being around 10cpm. If I were booking them closer in as most people seem to do, I'd be getting 20cpm+. In other words: it's fairly simple to get enough PQD if you have the "right" booking pattern.

In my case I wouldn't be that far off the relevant PQD despite buying tickets well in advance (with maybe 75% of my PQM being international flying), however quite a few flights were booked on other *A carriers so my PQD is well below the usual PQD requirements.