Originally Posted by
Adelphos
The point regarding Main Cabin Extra vs Comfort +
1) There seem to be fewer Main Cabin Extra seats - the American 737-800 and 737Max have three rows, for example - Delta's comparable A321 have five rows. So there are fewer opportunities to get a MCE seat
2) Snack basket. AA Main Cabin Extra doesn't seem to have a snack basket (correct me if I am wrong). Delta offers the same snack basket both in First Class and Main Cabin Extra.
FWIW, as someone who flies a lot on both airlines (EXP and Diamond), in my experience it seems more often to be the case that there's no Comfort+ seats available on a flight than no MCE. These considerations may be very fact-dependent, though.
I think your general observations are reasonable. As someone who does a lot of partner travel, the Loyalty Points thing is super annoying. I almost always get way less progress towards status on partner flights than I used to, or than I would get flying AA, and I'm reluctant to shift much credit card spend towards AA because of relatively poor value there in the categories I spend a lot of money on. On the flip side, I can probably earn a lot of Loyalty Points through other programs (e.g., Shopping) that I haven't really been paying attention to.
As a top-tier elite, GUCs are way way more useful than SWUs at this point.