When I book personal travel I am now seeing differences between Main Cabin and BE of $200 or more. Not like six months ago when it was around $50. I won't in anyway book BE because of limited earning and not wanting to get stuck sitting in 31B. I believe AA will lock down the program not allowing seat changes. Some will get lucky with only MCE seats available albeit it will probably be a middle seat, which I guess is better than 31B on a Max.
By the way I work in process workflow and the new thing is to segregate certain authorizations and abilities by "security groups." It's becoming very easy to limit what a GA or check in agent can do for a pax.