Perks of Flying Military Part 2: Get United Elite Status WITHOUT the PQD Requirement!
For those of you chasing United elite status, I’m sure the news of their PQD (premier qualifying dollars) requirement was disheartening. In addition to PQM (premier qualifying miles) or PQS (premier qualifying segments), you now must spend a minimum amount of money to reach a certain tier of status with them.
There are ways around this though. Frequent Miler had a post about how to manufacture spend your way to their status, via Marriott and status matching. There is, however, another way to get status – the old way, without PQDs. I was reading a post by Scott at Milevalue, and I happened upon this:
“For 2014, the PQD requirement only applies to members whose primary address on their MileagePlus account is in the 50 United States or the District of Columbia. Members who use U.S. military or diplomatic addresses (APO, DPO or FPO) are exempt from the PQD requirement.”
Make your address on united.com an address outside the United States, and the PQD requirement vanishes.
Boom! Now, this only applies towards 2015 status at the moment; I don’t know if that’ll be the case for 2016 status. However, if you’re stationed abroad or have a non-US address, make sure to change from a US address to eliminate the PQD requirement.
even if you have documented proof of non-US address, their systems might flag one’s account if you’re a very frequent traveler (say, >50 segs a year), and 90+% of them are US domestic.
Does Puerto Rico work?
Can you do the same with Delta?
@Patricia – That could be the case
@Al – As far as I know, Puerto Rico should work. I don’t know if this works for Delta, but my assumption would be that it doesn’t, as Delta does not have a friendly frequent flyer program by any stretch.