??? Please reread what IAH-OIL-TRASH wrote, he spoke of PQD's when flying NZ metal. I was putting out a polite reminder that only UA metal counts which is the subject of this thread.

I can share I have been told on numerous occasions by United corporate employees- there are three criteria for flights to be considered to qualify for GS: a UA operated flight, a paid flight, and credited to Mileage Plus.

UA operated means UA metal including United Express, any airline can issue the ticket, it can even be a code share. Anything flown on any other airline regardless of flight number does not count including UA issued tickets for Star Alliance partner operated flights. Paid flight means no MP awards or flights paid with UA's funny money issued year-end for corporate rebates and the like. And you have to credit it to your MP account, you cannot credit it to another program and ask later that those flights be considered for reaching the GS threshold.

The exact threshold is unknown, but I would be pretty confident that these are the flights that qualify. I will also add that they said it does not hurt flying discounted business or economy fares, cheaper tickets just make it harder to reach the qualifying threshold. I say all of this FWIW. While it came from UA employees the program could change without any notice, UA has the right to do that.

Last point I will add is that mistakes are not unknown when they run their numbers at the end of the year. Our corporate negotiated business class fares which were all coded as Z fares one year had no value attached to them when they ran their GS values. Took some discussion but they finally did an adjustment. So mistakes can happen, and I expect that this year they made mistakes on a wider basis than usual. At least I sure hope so.