Hello everyone. This is my first post in the AA forum and I hope I haven’t missed anything obvious in my research.

• My wife and I are both Leisure Plats on CO, meaning that we’re 100% on our own dime. We fly on the deepest discount fares we can get by booking well in advance when fares are particularly competitive. We’ve already booked our travel through Nov 2009.
• Most of our EQM’s come from what we refer to as our commute between our homes in the Metro NY area and New Orleans. We do at least 20 RT a year flying EWR-IAH-MSY. This trip is 3830 EQM and the result is 76K+ EQM which gives us each CO Plat. We also do 1 or 2 vacation trips a year. Last year was MSY-IAH-SFO and JFK-IAH-ANC. This year we’ve booked EWR-IAH-PTY and will probably do a MSY-IAH-EWR-FCO as well.
• CO offers (and we use) a 5% fare discount for Veterans Advantage members. Our spend for attaining CO Plat will be under $4K each this year. Note that we are flying specific places. Not looking for mistake fares for MR’s.
• One nice thing about our route is that there are about 12 flights a day each way between EWR-IAH and IAH-MSY so IRROPS and missed connections aren’t too much of a problem.
• We do a number of LGA-DTW trips as non-revs. Since a non-rev without a decent priority isn’t a fun way to travel, we use those very selectively, and never when travel is time critical.
• Our Upgrade percentage on CO is fairly poor (IMO) since we have about half of our flights between hubs (EWR-IAH) on Plat heavy flights where we are at the bottom of the heap with our N or L Fares (the 2 lowest on CO).
• Our favorite planes on CO are 752’s.
• We are investigating switching to AA and we believe that we can attain AA EXP.
• If we switched to AA, we would have to do 20+ LGA-DFW-MSY which would be 3648 EQM until we attained Status and then 3752 EQM when the 500 mile minimum for DFW-MSY kicked in. Even with 1 or 2 vacation trips adding another 12-15K EQM, we’d need about 10K in MR’s to get to 100K.
• We can fly from EWR, LGA or JFK with EWR preferred for cheaper parking and rental cars even though LGA is closer.
• AA fares for our ‘commute’ are higher than CO’s, even without our 5% discount.
• There appear to be a sufficient number of AA flights on our route although there are fewer seats (based on AC types)
• AA EXP will cost us more than CO Plat.
• AVOD doesn’t matter much but power ports are very nice.
• We have lifetime NW World Club, soon to become (we presume)Lifetime Skyclub which is meaningless on AA and will be soon on CO although, the CO gates in MSY are at the SkyClub (the only club at MSY) and we use it for almost every departure. We also have AMEX Plat which will get us AC access when flying AA.
• CO Insider on FT is a great resource and has helped us out a few times with specific situations.
• We attended CO’s DO IV in Feb and now know many CO employees and FT’ers. It does add a lot to one’s experiences and attitudes when you’re corresponding with someone you know.
• Meals and alcohol don’t matter that much to us. We fly early mornings and breakfasts are the usual meal. We both try to either work or sleep which tends to rule out alcohol, particularly at 6-7 AM.
• If we do go with AA, we’ll do a challenge in Jan and complete it by the end of Feb with whatever MR’s we’ll need for the year. This would give us March onward as Plats. It appears that as Plats, we only get upgrades with 500 Mile Certs. It would take 4 of those each way on our commute which means that we’d have to spend a year in coach. We need to get some really meaningful benefits out of the switch to justify doing that.

Now for our questions.

• The main question, which is difficult to phrase in a truly qualitative sense is:
• Is AA EXP better than CO Plat for us?
• Will we do better on upgrades? Particularly EWR-DFW and LGA-DFW.
• There are a LOT of CO Plats, particularly on the EWR-IAH route. It’s not unusual to see 60 -70 pax on the upgrade standby list and, as a Plat, to be in the 30’s. What’s the real story on AA on the NYC-DFW route?
• How comfortable are the FC seats?
• We get to select Exit Row seats when we book flights and since we tent too book well in advance, we invariably have them if we don’t get upgraded. How does that work on AA?
• Is there an AA equivalent to CO Insider?
• What don’t we know about that’s meaningful, i.e, what should I have asked that I didn’t?

Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read this and thanks in advance to anyone who responds.