I'm check raising the flop 9 times out of 10. Very few people are leading the the flop with a Queen and even fewer are doing so when last to act.

Then it would just be a case of losing as few chips as possible to the AQ guy. The check call isn't giving you a chance to win the pot on the flop, which given your stack and the pot wouldn't have been a bad thing at this point of the tourney. It also means that if either of them are drawing to an Ace or Trips they are going to have to pay for it. In the context of the tourney the only real concern you have is not losing a big chunk of your healthy stack. If you were under pressure from the blinds (10-15xbb or less) then a call on the flop would be a good (albeit riskier) way to milk the pot and induce another stab at it from MP3.

I like paired flops as if you assume that the first person to act doesn't have the trips you can take down a lot of pots with some well-placed aggression (the exception is a flop with a low pair of 664 or similar where a lead out bet can often be a defensive move from a mid overpair like 77 or 88 trying to avoid seeing an overcard on the turn).