I am inclined to pay the difference. It sounds like, from a pure comfort/dining sense, $345 is a little excessive. However, given that I'll probably be struggling to keep my United 1K status after this year (and given that I'll probably have UA upgrades to spare), it's unlikely that I'll fly AA on any significantly long/costly itineraries before my vouchers expire. So, in reality, the actual marginal value of those credits to me, while pretty hard to calculate precisely, might just be $150-200.

And there's an unquantifiable element to this: I'm sort of an avgeek (a term I struggle to stomach), and, unless my nonexistent screenwriting career explodes within the next decade and I'm flying private, I probably won't have an opportunity to fly in a bona fide F swivel seat in the U.S.

So, I'll probably just do it.