Originally Posted by benoit
I expect American Airlines to do what is in their business interests. Whether that means accomodating unreasonable demands from elite flyers or strictly enforcing rules on everyone, so be it.
I have no disconnect with anything you have said IF we assume that what the OP was told was explicitly covered by the rules and all AA was enforcing was the rules. I have no problems with AA enforcing their explicitly stated rules consistently on everyone (although I know that they don't) regardless of whether they are EXP or not.
But my (and the OP's) contention is that the case where he is denied based on the availability of a J business seat in a direct flight is not covered by the rules as stated but in fact AA "bending or interpreting" the rules to their favor in this specific case. At least according to the rule snippet posted by Jon. We can certainly discuss whether this is the case or not without putting orthogonal and unnecessary arguments of whether AA should be bending the rules (which presupposes the unproven as yet that the rules prevented it in the first place) or whether the OP's intentions were less than honorable. Companies make interpretations that favor themselves sometimes because they want to prevent abuse and sometimes because they want to get away with providing less than what the customer is entitled to for various reasons a possible speculation that I have posted earlier. It is not for me to pre-suppose that it is necesarily the former.
So no disagreements with your post but rather the basic assumption from which it follows that rules forbid the connection OP asked for.