As a lifetime 1K, my qualification goal was a bit different. I started flying some for work in April and needed 379k for LT GS so that was my goal for the year. I made a brave attempt but came up short. I had not done domestic MRs in a long time. I always did SIN or HKG for miles. If I knew in April what I knew in Sep, I may have made it.
I started positioning to SEA then did SEA-IAD turns. I was trying to save PPs. I weekend would get me about 13k. I quickly found out I did not like the redeyes without a bed. Then I discovered the JFK flights with easy upgrades, and doing the redeye LAX-ORD on widebodies. Much more comfortable and 14k for a weekend. When JFL switched to a 757, I switched to EWR. Ultimately the best routing I found was IAH-SFO-EWR-LAX. Then a night in LA. Then LAX-EWR-SFO-EWR-LAX-IAH. The routing was 18k.
For the year I did 87 flights between NYC and the west coast and 162 flights in total. Only 1 trip was a mess due to storms in EWR that resulted in a diversion to somewhere in PA. No other misconnects. The UA operation ran fairly smoothly for me this year. I had maybe 3 trans cons in coach which I survived. I did not even come close to using all my PPs.
But I did fall short of the goal by 55k. Now my work travel has picked up so I will limp across the finish line sometime in the next 6 months.