I don't think there's been mass hysteria.

AA has made drastic program changes midstream, both in program terms and structure/entities. Booking.com may still be the parent company. But it's no longer BAAH and Rocketmiles. Now it's AAH and RocketTravels. It's not the same tried & true RocketMiles folks have been using for years.

AA clearly now wants to limit the number of LPs and miles earned from the program. Until points earned under new system begin to post, we don't know what else has changed to facilitate this.

We don't know if no-show bookings will be honored, if concurrent bookings will be honored, and if AA is applying stricter criteria under the new program wrt the 20% and 30% bonuses (which has not been well defined or consistent anyway).

Knowledgeable people have posted reasonable opinions here that we shouldn't see major differences. Certaintly we all hope that's the case. But no one knows.

It's reasonable to me that people in for stays already on their own dime aren't willing to put up more $$ until postings start and there's a better feel for the new program.