Welcome to Ft Mozzarella
One of the things I've done in the past that helped was to book flights through UA/AC codeshares on UA ticket stock. I've not done it for domestic routes, but I've managed to fly YYZ - LAX on UA ticket stock for about $75 less than a Tango fare on AC. The bonus was the UA flights were all codeshares on AC metal, so not only did I get full Status miles, I also got to upgrade at the gate using SSWU's.
As an experiment download the UA schedule to get the codeshare flight numbers and see if a local TA can get you discount UA fares on those flights. If you get a competitive fare, you'll get full Q miles at a competitve price. The last time I did this was in late October of last year, so the window might have closed, but its worth looking.
DF