Challenge: Quickest way to *A Gold in 2020?
 

So this year I will re-qualify for *A Gold the last week of December. I don't like leaving it so late in the year so this next year I want to see how quickly (and cheaply!) I can re-qualify. I should mention that I am currently residing in China so I only need to have $3K spend on AC.

So far this is what I've come up with:
AC PE PVG-YVR-YYZ-EZE-YYZ-YVR-PVG Jan 13-20 (33,175 miles for $3750CDN)
UA PE/E PVG-SFO-LAX-EWR-SFO-PVG Jan 22-23 (22,060 miles for $1350CDN)

two weeks vacation in Jan for 55,235 miles and just over $5K CAD

-any other suggestions?

My suggestion would be a question: If you aren't organically flying 50k AQM then why do you care?

Seriously. Why on earth would you spend $5000 plus a lot of your time and other expenses taking a bunch of crappy flights? The *G benefits don't come anywhere close to this kind of value, and if they did you'd be flying enough already to get them.

Obviously I don't plan on sitting on a plane untold hours just to get *A gold. it's more of a mental exercise to see how quickly/cheaply it can be done.

I will be going back and forth to NA several times this year, and I would like to add a vacation trip to bulk up the miles at CNY.

If you have more travel planned, you should plan on getting SE-100K for the year... my only question is whether it would be better to get 1K on United or the top tier on Air China or another *A carrier?

AQD must be 6K -- with your plan, you are only half way there.

For non-Canadian residents, AQD is 50% lower. OP only needs CAD$3000 to achieve 50K

Credit to Asiana. Only need 40,000 miles to qualify and it lasts for two years, not one.

Given that OP seems quite capable of qualifying on an airline that will actually flown, I think either UA or AC is going to be a better option.

Foreign *G is never going to be as useful as having status on the airline you're flying.

I generally agree with your statement. However, I have the impression that the lowest *G status on any airline is not really of much help. Say I am LH Sen flying LH does not help too much compared to any other *G status. They big difference is holding top tier status on an airline and flying it. AC SE really makes a difference on AC while AC 50k or 75k does not really have that much value (except for maybe higher wait list priority and here the question is how often one needs it).

You want cheaply? Three trips to China on UA will be *Gold for under $1500.

If you are into self torture, you can also fly AC Y from the US to China for even less

United gives its gold free comfort plus seats at booking. But no lounge accesses to its gold members.

I'd love to know how to make comfort seat selection happen.

Depends on the routes you fly as well. When my wife and I had *G over the past several years, first with A3 then TK, we were Op-up'd several times when flying between YOW-YWG. Sure out of YYZ/YUL where there are a lot of status pax it isn't as useful, but on smaller routes that have good loads in Y without a lot of people with status it can be helpful.