Have to fly AA tomorrow on a day-trip to DFW (no way to do this on UA from SAN). I have exactly zero (0) miles and zero (0) status on AA.

Man, what a difference. First of all, and while I'm sure that a lot has to do with my familiarity with UA.com, AA.com was difficult to use and non-obvious. Most frustrating of all is that, despite checking daily, I have yet to be able to select seats (which is a pre-requisite to on-line check-in). I suspect that what's going on is that the seats I can select as a no-status flyer are so limited, that there are none available. Middle-seat both ways coming in the equivalent of E-, I'm sure. Yay.

So, I think that I just need to STFU re: all my prior idiotic whines about how 1K is being devalued, etc, cause even as a 1P, I would have been able to pre-select any seat on the plane, and plain old Premiere gets you a good shot at E+. Heck, even general members can buy-up in to E+ for a price I would easily pay just to get any aisle on AA.

The difference between elite status and no status appears to be infinity so far during this sad experiment.