It also gets more confusing.

From what I can work out - Any international AA flight will consider the (otherwise) first cabin to be a business class cabin.

So if you book from SJU->MIA or JFK->YYZ - you'll find it only ever offers business class in the same cabin that you would otherwise consider 'first'. This doesn't affect the AAdvantage members because they don't worry about tier points and the qualifying mile count is 1.5 in business or first. It does affect them with the class bonus however but that's relatively minor in status terms.

So - I'm doing a journey from YYZ to DCA connecting in JFK. It is YYZ->JFK in I class (40 points) and then JFK->DCA in P class (60 points). The silly thing is - JFK->DCA is shorter than YYZ->JFK and despite being on the same type of plane in the same type of seat with the same service yet I get more points.

Knowing this stuff can be very useful when planning the points though.