That rationale is sensible, but doesn't really address what Atmos releases. If that is true, then fine. It would be preferable to have confirmation from others who had award booking success on non-ME3 airlines for the select NA-SE Asia routes in business class, avoiding missiles and drones. There have been changes to displayed Atmos award availability, supposedly due to a glitch. Ideally it would be nice to know if that has been fixed, why some awards at previous prices don't seem to be available.
Either way, I won't suffer. I have already booked a fall trip in 2026 and a trip in 2027 to Southeast Asia on ANA and Cathay Pacific in business and first class. My goal was to better understand the Alaska Air Atmos award landscape, because I really like Starlux Airlines business class (at 85K Atmos points) and was interested in trying Condor sometime.