Originally Posted by
escapefromphl
If you can find a way to put $$$ spend across 3 credit cards, then spend an additional $3k/10PQF on regular flights, all you need to do is get the 44 PQF award flight running. 😂 Actually with the 2.5K initial bonus and the PQP for the award flights, it's slightly easier on the spend side too.
CC doesn't count for the pure spend option, so if you're going that route you're committed to the PQFs.
But to get 15k PQPs thats 360k in spend on the rcards. Assuming none of that is on UA, you're earning at minimum 360k miles which is another 3600 PQPs when redeemed, so your 18k PQPs is done due to CC spend alone. Then the question is can you find 54 award runs segments for ~6.67k or less each. If you can (on average), you could theoretically reach 1K without spending a single dollar directly with UA (besides taxes and card annual fees).