<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by BigLar:
OK Princess, but a couple of caveats regarding SW:
1. I think it's for trips, not segments. I.e., if you take trip to LAX, it probably stops in PHX. On a major, that's another segment. On SW, I think it's just the trip that counts, not how many segments it takes. I'm willing to be corrected on this, but that's my understanding.
2. The SW credits evaporate after a year. I have a friend who uses SW a bit, but the rolling one-year window keeps eliminating his older credits before he gets enough to use, so it does him no good.</font>
Personally I wouldn't take SWA to LAX. You don't get alot of FF mileage for your buck. The original poster stated that he lived in Texas and his wife would mainly be travelling in the Texas - Louisiana area. My advice was based on this statement. Flying short hauls on AA would take a very long to even earn one domestic roundtrip. Flying SWA for short hauls would maximize the free tickets. If his wife were travelling trans and mid cons I would have said fly AA hands down.
On SWA if you change planes you get credit for each segment but if you only stop over without changing planes then you only get one segment credit.
I do enough travel that I do my short hauls on SWA and my international and long hauls on Continental. I earn on average 4 tickets a year on SWA and still manage to make top tier on Contiental. This is what works for me. YMMV. I like the SWA tickets for trips to Orlando and Las Vegas with family. There is no fighting about who gets the upgraded seats since SWA is all one class.
The rolling 12 month period is a bummer if you don't travel often so if you were only doing very infrequent trips on SWA then it probably isn't the airline for you. Based on the Original Poster's info this shouldn't be a problem. A little planning will mean you won't lose any credits.
Note to the OP:
Selling SWA RR tickets on Ebay is officially against the rules but there is little they can do to stop it.