Originally Posted by
jc94
It matters if you are short of AQD but have enough miles. AC introduced AQD to cut our the bottom feeders, it's possible to fly 95 segments (or 100k AQM) without hitting $20k otherwise AC wouldn't have done it, say you normally fly 155 segments and your AQD is $20,000 and now 55 of those segments are BE. You'll still have your SE segments but some chunk of your travel is now AQD less. Maybe your AQD is now $16k, or $19k, or whatever, this is a rough example. Fact is AC aren't going to award you SE status if your AQD is way below. AC wins, you lose.
Any AQ* that we can get, we'll take for sure.
However, up until now, AFAIK, AQD and AQM/AQS were hand-in-hand. If you didn't get one, you don't get the other.