I wouldn't worry too much about this. Granted, ff tix are capacity controlled, but every piece of empirical evidence I've seen shows that AA provides more ff seats than almost any other airline. That's borne out by my own experience - I've almost always gotten the exact award I wanted on or very near to the dates I wanted. And almost all of my miles are earned through credit cards and other non-flight sources - I've only had status for one year since I started playing the ff game.