I live near NYC, can easily fly from LGA or JFK and with a bit of a drive from EWR. Once I have status with AA I’ll probably start flying with them and I won’t have to do the MRs on United anymore.

It’s funny as in all honesty I never even thought about status on AA. I needed to get to Buenos Aires 3 years ago and had enough miles with US Air and United and Delta (I've been more of a saver than a spender although in the future I hope to be more of a spender.) to go first or business on an award ticket. Made lots of calls trying to find a ticket and finally got lucky. Saw that AA flies non-stop to Buenos Aires from JFK so I decided to make it a mission to accumulate enough miles with AA so next time I could try to get an award ticket with them. A year or so into that “mission” I read here that all AA miles counted toward lifetime status and decided to continue the mission further.