I really love reading these threads.
Seriously. Most of the "Oh God how can you do that to the company" posts come from those who have never done MRs.
All my travel this year on AA has been from the MR or fare mistake aspect.
$1008 dollars for 7 itins and 51k eqm. Can better be done. Sure. But this year its been what I needed. And honestly. I would rather spend the average $140 per weekend on a plane than in a bar or doing someone else's hobby. Flying is fun. TSA blows. But flying is fun. It is what I want to do with my time. So I do value my time. Just differently than others here and there. We're all different. It makes life more fun. Trust me. I don't want to be you. And with all those dedicated hours up there I sure could plan to save the world. If I thought I was wrecking it. Those flights are flying whether or not I'm on them. And as any AA MR knows, some times they're not flying even if you're on them. I am so thankful for their constant schedule changes. Taking a simple nyc-san-pdx-lax-nyc and making it nyc-mia-lax-pdx return for no added cost. I have NO problem with that. They screwed me my changing the schedule and eliminating the flights I chose. At that point its them screwing me. So they compensate me in a way I accept. And I get more eqm.

The whole pay for eqm without flying doesnt work because of this one reason. The MRs we do are not the absolute cheapest thing we can find. It is the cheapest thing we can find from an airport that we can get to. So the cost "loss" to the airline is less and the number of runners less.

And I've never met a MR that had more than a carryon bag with them. So the previous unaccompanied baggage argument fails.