Are you flying on American Airlines twice per month? Then yes, you should get the Citi AA card. It gets you a bit earlier boarding, and the first checked bag is free on AA flights. If you are able to charge the AA flights to the AA card, and are remibursed for that, it's a good way to earn 2x AA miles, directly into your AA Frequent Flyer account.
Rather than blackout dates, it is more a case where certain flights are more miles than others, depending on demand and depending on class of travel. There are probably cases where they don't have a "pay with miles" option for specific flights, because they have sold most of the seats and don't fee the need to offer miles, but it's not an entire day where you cannot ever use AA miles on any flight anywhere ( which is how Capital One makes it sound ).
Yes, I have two actually, both are Platinums due to an old glitch in their bonus system that allowed double -applications a while back.
I just set up return flights from Maui for later this year, 22,500 miles per person and it's actually going on Alaska Airlines due to the partnership. (separate outbound flight from my GF United miles).
Instant approval for 8500 
Thanks for the info!
Congrats!
