It's been funny to me that the mileage calculations oftentimes have no tie to the trip mileage--I'm a civilian pilot and often track the flight via foreflight. I'm a frequent filer on United, and I've often wondered the crazy math they come up with to get the number of 'miles' I earned--as the article says I think its purely based off of dollars now despite United also having 'premier qualifying points' which is directly tied to dollars spent.
PQP used to be tied to miles ( with adders for business/first) so miles were used for status and points. Now, except for lifetime miles, it’s all just dollars.
