It's not a rumor. It actually says that in the FAQ on the announcement page. What is less clear is if AA Vacations (where it is easy to separate the air and land components) will be treated like other vacation packages, or differently.
Hmmm...just looked at a trip we have booked through AA Vacations and, if they use the 20% that they talked about for AAirpass, then we'd come out ahead on the mileage-based calculation. These are J tickets.
Cheers.
Sorry. Should have been clearer. One of the Q&A's with AA in the FB EP group said AA Vacations would be treated as a partner -- so % of mileage based.