Thanks everyone. Sounds like the biggest disadvantage with booking through a portal is any change process, including fees & needing to talk to Chase/AMEX instead of AA, which guts some of the benefit of status, unless AA is the one who has changed things.

Question: What does "take over" a reservation mean, then, if nothing about the reservation is changing? Simply that AA would be willing to handle changes to the reservation?

I'm not seeing any clear answer as to whether same day changes would be affected by where the reservation lives - it seems that AA charges a fee to "take over" the reservation and AMEX (for example) charges a fee to change a reservation, so how would one go about engaging a free same day change...for free? NYC Flyer I'm guessing from your post that if I were to want to do this, there would be no fee, and I'm guessing I could still do it through the app?

AAdamE Thanks for the reminder about booking directly. And to your point about the Citi card, the quest for LP's is moving me in that direction - toward the Citi AAdvantage Executive. I'm completely with you in terms of it being a horrible card otherwise, but in the 4 years I've had my Chase Sapphire Reserve, I've used those travel protections exactly 0 times. Doesn't mean I won't ever, but in weighing the personal costs of switching over to the Citi card, including losing out on booking with my AMEX card and getting those 5 points, I'm more interested in status via Citi than points accrual, at least at this point. Part of my rationale for this is that I'm more interested in status (and, therefore, the regular privileges of everyday flying) rather than an extra free ticket from time to time via points.