Originally Posted by
orbitmic
The main advantage of a single booking is really that if you need to change or cancel the whole trip, with two bookings, you'll have to pay the cancellation/change fee twice. Conversely, if, say, AA cancelled one flight, on a single itinerary, both would become flexible - by contrast, on two bookings, the unaffected flight would incur the change/cancellation fee if you want to amend it even if another itinerary has been disrupted.
Fortunately, for domestic award bookings on AA/AS, the BAEC cancellation fee is just the $5.60 September 11 Security Fee for each ticket. Even if both flights were on a single ticket, unless the two flights made up a "connection," two September 11 Security Fees would be charged, so the passenger would still have to pay $11.20 to cancel.