With OO dropping some of its EAS routes, I missed out on a lot of "easy" PQF from the past few years... these weren't connections per se, things like IAD-SHD-LWB where you didn't even get off the plane at SHD, but still got 4 PQF for the roundtrip.

Instead, I've added connections, typically EWR (ugh!) for east coast destinations, ORD for midwestern ones, and DEN for the rest. LAX and SFO have been either pricing insanely for connections (e.g. to SNA) or are zero chance of using PP to upgrade, unfortunately.

The big challenge is that adding connections is asking for trouble, and recovery from said trouble often means overnights or flying in a middle seat in the back even if booked in paid F depending on the day and route. So I book longer connections to account for potential issue... and still have been hammered by problems. 4 hour connection in ORD, well, meet 4:10 MX delay out of IAD and an overnight at ORD! 2.5 hour connection at EWR, meet a combo 1 hour WX delay and then a 1 hour wait for a gate at EWR! The other big challenge is that unlike days of yore, connecting flights often seem to be significantly more expensive than nonstops. I witnessed this looking at my final travel of the year, where the nonstops were all around $300 to any of the destinations I considered, but adding either an EWR or an ORD connection added $400-500 additional to the fare. Same for transcons; I used to prefer connecting in SFO (particularly on redeyes) as the flight was longer and gave me a chance to sleep, whereas now, if the destination is served by a nonstop (LAX, SAN, for example, from IAD), adding a SFO connection can at times double the price.

I suppose if I hadn't bought F outright on as many routes as I did this year, I'd be short on PQD and not grumbling that I am already over $18k PQD and still have several PQF to go this year. Want F, buy F, anyway.

I recall when I first got into frequent travel that I qualified entirely on segments (50 for UA *G/PremEx, 100 for UA 1K)... which was a slog, but one could do an itin like IAD-LGA-ORD-TUL-SFO-MRY in a day and not have a huge risk of irrops blowing the whole thing up (and if they did, reroute, then request original routing credit). The way the banks and fare rules are set up today, it would be a challenge to do more than 3 connections either way in a day, and at that, those 3 connections are at huge risk, particularly if they involve EWR or ORD. And even then, my tolerance for flying just for the sake of flying is much lower after having flown for decades; I hate the thought of IAD-ORD-DEN-CNY as recently contemplated to add an extra PQF to an existing itin.

I wish we'd see a paid promo like UA used to run, a decade or more ago, where you could earn double PQF during a qualifying period. I get that the shift to spend-based qualification means this is incredibly unlikely--after all, can't make the PQF, then make the PQD threshold instead, and there's no PQF-only mechanism of qualifying. But they do let you buy PQD, so I wish they'd let you also buy PQF (even if at an outrageous rate, like 1 for $500, which this year I'd have paid to not have to add yet another EWR connection and know I am going to be sprinting through the airport or cussing as we just sit and sit and sit waiting for a gate to open up).