Originally Posted by
guv1976
There are still AA award seats available with Avios -- maybe not as many as before, but they are still there. The big devaluation, however, came when BA upped its redemption rates for award travel on AA. The same PHX-SBP one-way in Economy for which BA is now asking 12,000 Avios, used to cost just 6,000 Avios (and just 4,500 Avios before that!)
I have family and friends in the US and Canada and used to book between ORD variously to /BNA/RSW/YYZ and never had any problems booking to any of them or between them, sometimes in domestic first. It was simple to find a qualifying fare on the AA website then search for it on BA. It became so difficult to find Avios reward flights after the introduction of WebsAAver fares (which are now plentiful and take up most of the previous allocation), I have given up trying.