sgopal2: No, I did not realize ORD is an AA hub. I feel really dumb now. But yes, after one trip on AA in my life, I'm a big fan of MRTC; it helps a bunch since i'm 6'1".

ElmhurstNick: What do you mean by "free business class seating on the one daily 767 flight to LA and to SF and the one daily 777 to Dallas"? I can't find anything about this on the AAdvantage web site. Is this an unpublished perk? Is it guaranteed or based on availability/priority?

hindukid: Small world. :-) Yes, many places will book your travel, but some law firms let you book it and be reimbursed.

Everyone: Thanks a bunch for your insights. Flyertalk is truly a wonderful thing. I haven't seen anyone really discuss why AA is better than UA. Any program details, or just their CS problems?

Anyway, I booked a trip in July on AA, since I don't have very much experience with them at all. If I decide to do a Gold challenge at some point, would these segments count? How do the challenges work?

Thanks again everyone! This is really useful.

Diffferences that I have noticed between AA and UA:

1. AA allows stopovers on Domestic awards. If you were going home you could do something like ORD-IAH-ORD-NYC. Booking the return to NYC with a stopover at ORD would give you a free one way to NYC, then only have to buy a 1 way for the return. Since you can change dates, you'd basically have a free 1 way to NYC good for a year.

2. AA allows using partners along with AA on international awards with exception of BA. For example if going to Italy, you could use LH to go but then would also have to find availability returning on LH. With AA if you took AA to Italy, but no return was available on AA, you could also use SR,air lingus, IB or Finnair. This allows for a lot more flexibility which helps you get the dates that you need.

3. AA partner awards are good for all of Europe not just home country. LH award from UA to Italy would cost 50K to germany and then 20K additional from Germany to Italy. For cities UA doesn't fly to outside of a carriers home country (florence for example)minimum mileage would be 70K. AA carriers will do this on one awards for as little as 40K depending on season.

4.UA doesn't allow domestic connecting travel on international award during domestic blackout days. Wanted to return from Europe on Sunday after thanksgiving. UA wouldn't give me ORD-IAH segment because it was a blackout day. AA said it's allright since I'm using a Europe award and that day wasn't blacked out for Europe. So for awards requiring domestic coonection, you would be subject to both domestic and international blackout days with UA.

5. AA just seems to have better award availability.

You can use AA in combination with BA on a European award, but just not on the international sector. I have booked for the spring - AA)ORD-CDG(stop)
BA)CDG-LHR-AMS(stop/destination)
BA)AMS-LHR
AA)LHR-DFW (stop)
AA)DFW-ORD
All for a 40k award(1 international stop, 1 international destination, 1 domestic stop).
So, in my opinion AA gives you the most flexibility

Thanks for your advice everyone. I recently discovered that I'm going to be doing enough round trips in the next month to get 5000 q-points on AA, so I've enrolled myself in a challenge. I'll be trying out AA in the next little while and seeing if I like it. Thanks for all your help!

Good Luck on the Challenge. I was in a similar position last year when I graduated. My family is also in Houston and I had a large number of miles on Continental, as well as Gold status. I promptly started flying AA, though, and haven't looked back. CO is great... IF you want to go to IAH, EWR, or CLE (MSP, DTW, MEM on Northwest). Bascially everywhere else requires a connection.

I suppose that might be acceptable, but if you need to get somewhere quick for an interview, connections can get annoying fast.

When you combine the connection issue with what everyone else has already pointed out, I think going with AA is a nobrainer.

Welcome to AA, and welcome to Flyertalk.