apeortdz welcome to the world of QR where everything in the air is first rate whilst everything on the ground is usually mediocre.
It sounds as though you are buying a higher ticket class with AA. QR have ticket classes J, C, D and I in order of descending cost order.
The ticket class is normally the first character of the Fare basis. If you can see the fare basis for these two different then you can see which ticket class is used.