Originally Posted by yellow77
A possible explanation is that the domestic award stopover rules are different for a ticket entirely on AA (as opposed to one using AS as well, for example). Is that the answer?
I don't know if that's the answer, but there is definitely more to the story.
I recently had no problem using AA miles to ticket an all-AS award ticket itinerary OAK-oJNU-ANC FAI-OAK, i.e. open jaw with stopover in JNU on the OAK-ANC part (I've left out the connecting cities for clarity). Clearly JNU is not a "natural connecting point" so this itinerary would seem to violate the rules that were posted.