If he was only flying on Star Alliance partners with non-016 tickets then the United Plat status won't really be doing much for him... not relevant to the initial ask, but makes me curious how you get into this situation .

If I get to the end of the year, and haven't reached the $30000 on my British Airways Chase card, I just put my property taxes on the card. Have to pay the service fee, but it is worth it.

He never said his goal was Plat, he said he had the miles for Plat. But assuming his goal was *G, he won't even be getting that without a PQD waiver.

I'll end the year with ~76K PQM's and $3,300 in PQD. Swap out Christmas travel for something in the low season and I could probably be under $3K. A $650 ticket to BKK , a ~$550 ticket to Sydney, and a very cheap P/R fare combo to Europe didn't hurt. My PQD is normally in the $8-$10K range but this was just an off year with not a lot of business travel and some cheap personal tickets. Crossed 1MM back in October which comes at the perfect time.

I can see how OP has less than $3k PQD with good old fashioned mileage runs, cheap fares and the waiver(which is what United is targeting with next year's elite requirements).

I don't normally do mileage runs but I had to go to Asia anyway and the opportunity to do the island hopper cheap presented itself. I booked EWR-NRT-SGN, PEK-NRT-GUM-(island hopper)HNL-EWR-YOW for $467.That itinerary earned me about 20k PQM but $310 or so in PQD.

Another example was where I used miles to get to Asia for another trip and came back to the US with PVG-SFO-LAX for $162 ($127 PQD but 6700 PQM).

The cheap $250-$300 fares to Europe from the US adds PQMs but little PQD too.