I had heard over year ago from a former very, very high AAdv source something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "..and member would pay for the flights they use" but that was during a conversation about "customer must use most direct routing" on partner flex awards and how/if that rule intermingled with carrier published fares requirement so I never for a second thought it was making any reference whatsoever to eliminating Explorer awards.

Looking back at the email exchange, I can see that maybe there were -some- signs there that AA was definitely planning on coming much closer to "the fewer flights per award the better"-- it's kind of all there in a sense.

But, at the end of it, I personally never heard any credible rumors of elimination of Explorer awards whatsoever.