Fewest FF miles for longest distance
 

Today I realized with only $146 EQD for a flight from ORD-PVG I scored a whopping 1606 miles for the leg. As a 1K, the old system provided 14,112.

Could it be any worse?

Ouch!

And a general member would only get 730 :( :(

Fare sales would be the reason why the fares are so cheap and the majority are taxes.

My friend has the following coming up:
San Francisco, CA (SFO)-Tokyo, Japan (HND - Haneda)
PQD: $49
RDM (for him): 245
Old RDM: 5160
He's a general member.

How cheap were the tickets??

It's obvious they're incentivising paying more for your tickets, that's for sure.

PQMs are not affected by the spend calculation, right? RDMs are the base fare multiplied, but PQMs should still be as before (distance, 500 miles minimum for Premiers).

So a cheap fare for a long distance would rack up good PQMs and puny RDMs (and few PQDs). Inverse for expensive short flights (few PQMs, good PQDs, good RDMs). Neither alone is great for achieving status; at least the Accelerator or PQM/PQS purchase offers allow someone with high spend on short flights a way to even things out. People flying $49 base fares SFO-HND and back will earn plenty of PQMs but come up way short on PQDs and either have to spend way more or use a credit card exemption from PQDs.

The leg was $346--more taxes than fare!

I've priced but not flown an LAX-BKK that would earn 1 PQD (if I recall). I think it routed LAX-NRT-BKK with a base fare of $0.50. I don't have the tolerance to go that far in Y though, so I don't have anything that low actually posted.

I got about 10 miles for a TATL segment last year. It was priced at $2 or so.

You're right. This is what happens when I stay up too late. I'll edit my post :) Sorry!

YQ would be included.. I doubt you'd ever see $1 worth of PQD/RDM.

I earned 27 PQDs on NRT-JFK last October.

Fare mistakes are fun.

In this case, the YQ worked out to be zero. Total ticket cost was something like $250 all-in, including an "excursionist perk" in SE Asia.

An previous thread discussed http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...t-highest.html for a single segment.

With the money you saved on the fare, buy some miles if that is important to you.

And using a 1.5 cpm, in the old system, you earned the equivalence of $212 in miles while UA received $146 for the flight, so UA would have paid you $66 to make the trip. Wonder why UA changed the system?

You can change the cpm to your liking, but UA realized it was rewarding deep discount elites flyers too much -- they were money losers. You were just following the UA rules and UA changed the rules to address the situation.