To me it just seems like pure laziness, similar to anything else AA does. There’s no reason they couldn’t load up those same printers with a plain white card stock version, with only the fields necessary programmed to print out. And yet they choose to continue with the ugly, confusing ticket stock that isn’t even designed for an age of e-ticketing. It’s not a change that would even require replacing all their printers - at DL, the counters can have either the thin thermal paper or thick plain card stock, but the format and content of what prints is exactly the same. It’s not 1980 and the minimal effort required to reprogram the printing format is an expense that other airlines have no problem taking on as a branding and marketing cost.