there is also the issue of the goodwill generated to most frequent travelers by making award availability easier because a small subset of people aren't grabbing " lots" of premium class awards,
as someone who has qualified for platinum Premier using belt in seat miles, I have always found premium class award availability on American much worse than Delta.
AA is often letting flights go out with empty premium class seats, so they could make those seats available if they wanted. I wouldn't bet on the account shutdowns resulting in more availability, although they may release some more seats for a short amount of time if they feel they must for PR reasons .