I have a friend at AA FF department and he told me some interesting numbers. Don't quote me exactly - but these are rough numbers I did remember from the conversation.

The devaluation of points which happened a few years back (when they introduced revenue-based earning) together with higher fees and FF availability slashed value of your points by about 75-80%.

AA is in such a dire financial condition (they still have in access of 20+ billions in debt), compared to UA / DL, that they were forced to do this. The previous management miscalculated product rollouts (no screens in short-hall fleet, catering on their international key routes, etc.) and lost higher-end pax and corporate accounts to competition.

The current changes will further slash the value of points - it is not yet known by how much exactly, but if you take out partner airlines (where the value still somewhat holds, although QR and others are not happy apparently), the estimate is up to 90% of the value of your points gone compared to 2022 value. He admitted they have lots of award availability on some key international routes, but they need pax to burn through miles, so they are kept artificially high (EU), Australasia for 800K + in J won't be an exception etc... New fees on your redemption (some of them will be 5 - 10 higher, they learned this from BA. Apparently they are to come incrementally. I already saw some AA metal redemption at $400 plus points... He said the real cost of biz. class seat LHR-JFK is still about $60 to the airline. They plan to maximize this by 3 - 10 times. Not sure if I did get this point correctly.

All in all - I am a 1 million miler on AA, and still have 900k plus miles in my account, but I am burning through them on all of my travel, if it makes sense. And I slowly move towards Alaska match-up in July this year. Some of the worst flights of my life I have taken were recent additions on AA metal. Domestic and international. SYD-LAX canceled, downgraded from biz due to aircraft shortage, little food on board, etc. AA domestic even worse. I try to avoid at all cost. AA to Hawaii is a joke, it's now on the level of Southwest. The airline survives due to its sheer size and infrastructure importance, but otherwise, it should not exist within the competition.