THANK YOU for a very articulate, reasonable commentary on the merger from a US FF. Very helpful, and much better than the usual "the sky is falling" commentary. ;)

Ditto.

Although, as all talk like this is pure speculation, here's a possibility: the new AA could just go with 3 tiers as AAdvantage is now. Let all the 75K US elites have EXP for a year, then roll down to Platinum the next year. Pure speculation, yes, but as nothing has been stated on this issue....

I'm glad that US seems to be stepping up to AA's standards rather than dropping down. ^

I've never seen more than 8 or 9 people on the UG list with flights between BOS and LAX, ORD, etc. Maybe I fly at less busy times or something.

I'll be flying to SFO tomorrow AM. F is completely full, so I'm not at all shocked that I will be riding in the back. OTOH, my Fri-night red-eye back to JFK is completely empty. All of the elites cleared that list for sure. I expect these flights to become A321T flights in the near future.

B south can actually combine the merged entity (especially with AA's reduced footprint) if Air Canada moves out of B1-B3. As it is now, the B4-B14 pier is lightly used, and the shuttle doesn't take up all of the B15-B22 pier. Likely will require some RON airplanes to be parked remotely and towed over, however.

Compared to B North, B South is actually pretty nice.

I for one hope they don't do anything at all with the livery as I don't care 1 iota what the metal tube I'm flying in looks like from the outside. I'd much prefer they spend their funds on continuing to upgrade the soft and hard products and maintaining the benefits of the FF program. Changing the livery (and therefore having to rebrand all over again) would, IMO, be nothing short of a moronic waste of money.

Didn't AA lease out one of its gates to VX? (the one visible from the admirals club)

Also the new AA could always make more cuts at SFO to make it work.

Yes, but the US gates will be on one side of the terminal and the AA gates on the other, with United in between. At some point new AA will presumably want to reshuffle the three sets of gates so they can have a contiguous footprint.

I was told that AA has / had a contract with a bank(?), where a large number of employees commuted on a regular basis. There were so many EXPs that there was a separate boarding announcement for them.

Exactly. Write "American Airlines" on the side of the plane and be done with it.

Ahh, interesting. Well then I guess that's more of an extreme circumstance.

Of course it does. :p Obviously a topic that has been discussed before, but while it works for some, I also think it's the least logical from a financial point of view, but probably remained due to IT limitations. And FWIW, I wasn't aware of US's scheme, that's kind of interesting.

The Y/B advance/top priority upgrades are also logical, from a financial point of view. CO had been doing it for years (and M fares, just below B, also qualified for top-tier). These days, you can buy directly into F in most cases for less than the cost of Y/B, even at the last minute. Domestically there is rarely a reason to buy Y/B unless the cabin is near-full, even last-minute fares on many routes can be purchased in lower classes. Of course, this means that there aren't all that many people on Y/B fares to jump over you in the upgrade priority. Most likely an international connecting passenger.
But if you did have to buy Y/B, chances are FC is only $50-100 more, so think of it like the airline offering a small discount on FC purchases to elites.

does anyone know the rate of the conversion to aa miles from US

With 99% certainty, it will be 1:1.

And the "no way AA would have done this, even though every other airline has, and every program has historically devalued over time. We know "old" AA never would have followed along, so everything is DP's fault" argument, I assume.

It's starting to sounds as bad as US political discussions.