AA’s work rules are not “terrible.” That is a broad sweeping generalization. What we do have are the remnants of a BK contract which still has some facets of BK work rules, such as no hotel language , the inability to pick up a trip over the footprint of a displaced-IOE trip, and bad STD/LTD language, to name a few. We also don’t get the big profit sharing that DL,UA and SW gets. Those things are all high priority items for our contract negotiations and Will Get fixed with the next contract.
That said, we have industry leading duty/trip rigs (same as DL and UA plus we get paid for “sit time” if we have sits that are more than 2hrs.)
We also have live 24/7 trip trading starting on the 24th of each month (for next months schedule.).. nobody else has that and it has made me lots of $$$ trading out of undesirable trips for much better ones, pretty much anytime during the day/night.
Our reserve system is pretty decent, you can either bid for Long Call or Short call for the entire month.
Those are just a few areas where our QOL is decent.
AA has a great pilot group, I've made life long friends here who won’t hesitate to give you the shirts off their backs. Overall pretty good chief pilots too. Been here almost 20 years and have had zero regrets with how my career has gone.

Overall, AAs work rules are pretty comparable to the others with the exception of those items above. To call them “terrible” is a stretch and usually comes from bitter folks who came from other airlines that continue to live at that previous airline insisting that theirs was the right, and best, way while constantly ripping on everything AA (you know you who are here on this forum... )

I’ve been averaging 15 days off /month for 85ish hours as a 60% living in base domestic NB CA. Great QOL driving to work and I earned pretty much the same as my DL/UA/SW buds in similar bid statuses.

That said... tough choice man. I wish you the best in your decision, you really won’t go wrong with either airline. Despite AAs debt they are going nowhere, these things are cyclical in this industry and change on a whim. I also absolutely love SW, have a few friends there and always admired the culture there. Agian, can’t go wrong with either choice, Good luck!