Originally Posted by
eternalX
Ah. Thanks! So at this point I might as well buy the cheapest one way ticket I can find versus paying a premium for AA.
Well - while, AA won't through check bags, it does (somewhat paradoxically) have a policy of protecting missed connections across separate AA or OneWorld tickets. So if something happens to the SEA-DFW flight and your family would miss the DFW-GRU flight, AA's policy would be to rebook them. Not the case if coming in on an unrelated airline.