I actually enjoy and learn quite a bit from those HF classes. They've gotten a lot better over the years. I remember back around 2005, they were showing videos of all of the incidents /accidents AA had during our bad streak in an effort to "sober us up".... that was BS. Nowadays it is a good class. Just went through it last week and came out having learned a few good things.

I suspect AA is pretty much like most other airlines out there, just a few cultural differences but overall the cockpits are run very CRM-friendly. 99.9% of CAs I fly with are very good at delegating and using the crew concept, making sure we both agree on everything. Of course there is always that 1% but all airlines have them.

Looks like it wil change for the better now with the USAir culture mixing in.