ExplorerWannabe

If it's that easy to requal for 2020, I'd say go ahead and do it. That gives you another year to decide on where to jump ship to while reaping the benefits of what you've already done on United -- including taking that free CLEAR membership for 1Ks. You will also be able to status match in late 2020 with another airline for 2021 travel using your 1K status.

Boraxo

Extensively discussed above. Calculate the value of 1K to you personally (which can vary greatly depending on your home and travel patterns) and decide if the perks (particularly upgrade points and fee waivers) are worth it. However if you are planning to switch and earn status on a competitor then maybe you won't fly UA as much anyway.

billchristoff

I was going to be 3,000 miles short. I could have done accelerator on a NY flight but for the 660 in cost i decided to take a flight to Vegas with my son. So entering year 3 into decent business travel, i have gone from general to gold to platinum to ending this year at 1K (100,700 miles and 16K in spend on 26 segments) The additional points that I might be able to use to score a few upgrades on my TALT flights are worth it. (As an aside, I was first really ticked off with the changes, I think with the new premium Economy seating on ORD - LHR i might hit the high spend requirement for future years but i am going to look at other programs.)

drewguy

So opinions seem to put <$1000 in PQD as probably worth the spend to hit 1K? That's where I'll be - just over on PQM but somewhere about $1000 short of PQD.

I guess the nice thing about being short PQD is you can book last minute and it's not a problem, unlike PQM where you don't want to waste money on last minute fares.

findark

It all comes down to what you intend to do with the GPU. 6 GPU are easily worth $3,000 and probably a good bit more if you use them to Australia. If you can't take an upgraded international trip next year, 1K is worth much less. In 2017 I ran for 3k PQD to requalify and had no regrets. But I always use at least 4 GPU and usually all of them.

drewguy

Yeah, I can "use" them in the sense of applying them, although we know how that goes. I've had decent success TPAC, which is most of my flights . . . still 2 left for this year though.

bryanwallace

obviously with the new rules coming in now the game has changed-wonder whether at all worth bothering to get to 1k over plat now...
as an international resident it would mean using star alliancerather than ua to meet to goals which would rather defeat the point of 1k

findark

1K will be if anything more valuable than today. Harder to get by a long shot, but more valuable on an absolute scale.

Boraxo

agree 100%. I would rather have 3 GPUs (or higher # of RPUs) that I could actually use instead of 6 that almost never clear.

jsloan

I'm not convinced they'll be much more useful than they are today. However, at least you could have three GPUs that you didn't have to up-fare in order to waitlist. On some routes, that's a massive savings.

kevflyer

I am ~19,000 PQM short of 1k but I can hit that with a quick $630 mileage run to Asia (Don't need PQD). With the new MP program next year I will probably status match elsewhere after July. Is it worth doing the run to hit 1k?

Kmxu

Yes if you can use all GPUs.

Artpen100

Yes, time will tell. I won't make 1K (just plat), but this year I had been able to use only 4 GPUs on international flights, and I just had to change one leg on my last international flight and bought up to business since there was no PZ and the price was reasonable. So I will now have 3 out of 6 left over (unless I can use them on some domestic flying next month, which is not nearly as valuable). And we still don't know how the changes will affect future PZ availability. Could be more, but just as likely could be less (it certainly has been shrinking on my routes, and I kind of doubt that will reverse direction). It doesn't mean that I won't be looking for UA upgrades - I'll just be looking at them with miles and copay at booking, like I used to do before making 1K. So I should get a sense of how availability is changing. Also, given the delay in their processing the waitlist, I suspect that I will also be snagging upgrades for miles and copay away from waitlisters with instruments, just like I am sure I used to do before by monitoring then-Z like a hawk.