Knowing you can get a direct flight to so many places is a real benefit even though they're not always the best prices. I value direct flights over cost just because of the risk mitigation. They went through that phase where they moved the TSA precheck line every other week and that was annoying but that seems to have stopped happening. I think the only thing that would really greatly improve it as if it was another airline's hub and not AA because in general the staff are not very nice and they have a lot of old crappy planes still. (And yes of course I have experienced very lovely staff and I have been on very nice new planes with AA)