I hope all goes well for you! I miss the days when once you had your flights booked, you could stop worrying about the “getting there” part!
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How does American work with luggage? I just booked with them for the first time for a trip out to CA in Oct and I didn’t see any way to pay for my bags. I am not a reward or credit card holder, so they’re not free. It’s kind of freaking me out.
We were in Disney at the same time. Our flight home on Saturday (anticipated landfall in NY) was cancelled the Thursday before. After much back and forth about driving home, flying home earlier to a different airport, etc, we just decided to stay. SW couldn’t get our family of 7 on another flight until the following Thursday - giving us a nice 6 extra day “bonus” vacation. Disney was fantastic and gave us two rooms at ASSports for $35/night. We all had annual passes, so the only thing out of pocket really was food. It was magical. That was one of my favorite trips.
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I think pretty much all carriers work the same as far as tagging your luggage. Only difference with American will be the payment part. This far out you might look into getting a branded card to save on luggage. It’s $25 each way and your card would cover that fee for yourself and up to 4 people also booked with you.
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I get this. We are flying down on 4/24 on SW. I’m so nervous that it will be cancelled and we lose a day or worse. I guess our backup would be driving, DH doesn’t mind and that’s what we used to do on family trips. Once it was just DH and I, we loved the 2 hour flight vs 14+ hours driving. Plus, he drives a lot IRL so the plane is always a treat.
Note that the majority of airlines require a credit card to pay for luggage fees at the airport. We found this out the hard way when dd was flying solo at 16yo, had to switch airlines due to weather, and scraped together $40 ($35+$5 fee) to purchase a debit card so she could check her bag. Dd had a credit card the next time she flew!
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I’m not 100% certain bc I have a AA card, so I get 1 free bag per person… But I’m pretty sure that when you go to the kiosk to get the tags you can pay there with a card.
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Also, if anyone is even thinking about an AA card, they changed the loyalty program so that miles earned on purchases count towards elite status. 
So you can gain elite status fairly fast if you use the card a lot and plan to fly American more often.
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That is how I have been paying for it, yes.
Some airlines allow you to pay ahead of time (I did so with United when I booked last week), but I don’t think American allows paying before check in.
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I leave wednesday on sw, return flight is monday on frontier. Ive been checking for cancellations every 2 hours. I have been tempted to book a back up flight on delta but the “fully refundable” language is pretty vague about whether that means airline credit or $$.
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That’s terrible! I wish all of you could just fly Alaska. I think they’re amazing. And they have a great FF program.
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BASIC economy. Which is still bonkers but a key distinction.
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Yes…but I’m not ALLOWED to book anything but basic economy, so I’m out of luck in earning points. And, the extra added cost to upgrading to Comfort+ means that I’m essentially PAYING for the “free” points because the extra costs add up significantly by the time you earn enough points to book anything.
So, in other words, without being able to earn SkyMiles on basic economy, the entire program is worthless UNLESS you always book Comfort+ or higher already.
Wait but what about economy? You cant book a regular economy fare? Before comfort plus there is regular economy (maybe called main cabin?).
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Also, skypesos was worthless before they made this change 
No. Comfort+ is the same thing as Main Cabin economy. Different names for the same thing.
Wut?
For work.
Main cabin and comfort plus are different sections/prices.
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Ok but it’s not. Basic economy is a main cabin seat but no refund and you cant pick a seat. Economy is main cabin and you can pick a seat and get a travel credit. Comfort plus is a bigger seat and no bag fees. Premium select is like domestic first and offered on some long haul routes. Then business, delta one, etc.
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Something that is really confusing to me is that on the Delta site, they describe Basic Economy as meaning you can’t choose your seat and main cabin means you can (otherwise the same thing). But I have to book Basic Economy for Work. I was then given a choice in seat. Um. Hmm. But it is definitely listed as Basic Economy, NOT main cabin nor comfort+.
The very next level UP from “Basic Economy” was “Comfort+”. There wasn’t even given an option for Main Cabin separate from Comfort+, which is why it appears to be the same thing as Comfort+.