I have noticed this as well -- I was doing some long range planning for an outbound flight next year PHX/HNL -- the only tickets on the day I was originally looking for were 80K first class, for this flight I was looking at coach. I was able to choose to leave one day earlier and book the two seats in coach at 17.5K miles. Really sort of strange. I mean my earlier plan was outbound on a weekend and I expected to need 25K miles, but gosh, a steep price for those without flexibility.
For that matter, the rest of the trip I have planned includes HNL/CNS with an overnight in Sydney.
Well if I used HNL miles it would have been 130K business class from HNL to SYD. Instead, using AA miles, it was 65K for both legs (HNL/SYD, then the next day SYD/CNS).
There seem to be times when HA is not real nice to its FF folks.