We just used 150,000 AA miles for 3 domestic roundtrips for relatives to come to Calif from the east coast on standard awards. There were no saver awards on any airline for the dates they wanted to come and the tickets would have been about $500 per person.

We don't fly AA much but had accumulated the miles through several cycles of credit card offers, had little other use for the miles, and therefore didn't see the point of spending $1500.

This is an example of why I am not so concerned about the lack of availability of saver award space. Yes, you need to spend more miles but you can also get them so much more easily. Inflation on both sides of the equation.