I guess it depends what's important. I should've clarified that AA's miles "pricing" for "dynamic" is nothing compared to Delta for Skymiles (again, IMO).

Would you rather a website that fluctuates every time you look at it (I was monitoring First class airfare from ALB to HNL a while back and checked several times a day for 4-5 days straight. Prices fluctuated from 210,000 to 280,000 Skymiles roundtrip).
AA was "consistent" at the AAnytime First rewards for 1/2 the amount of miles.

Won't even touch the 400k+ skymiles for a roundtrip from JFK to Europe (or more if I remember someone posting a Delta dynamic pricing of almost 1 million skymiles in Delta One).

Although long layovers on AA aren't new. Last year they would do the same for the lowest price awards, IMO.

Yep, used to get a bag of chips for flying 100k + per year. Now crumbs, if lucky.

It is obviously a YMMV situation, but I have found AA options to be terrible domestically. A flight I am looking at is $154 E- or $189 E or 30k miles. The only milesaver option involves an 18 hour overnight layover into an alternate airport. The DL option is $173 or $208 or 17k miles. Not a great redemption, but something I could live with. I wish I could say that is an anomaly, but from my searches it is not. International and partner travel is a different matter.

This. The surcharges on BA awards only make that a viable option IMO if you're unable to find a good deal on a paid ticket, which if booking far in advance is often the case. Some data points:

For my Oktoberfest trip this year where we were to spend 5 days in MUC then 3 in AMS I was able to find an award J ticket SEA-LHR back in Feb that worked for my dates, only one way as the return dates didn't have award availability so was watching for something to open to get me home from AMS. This award was ~$600 in taxes/fees plus the 57.5K miles and on top of that I'd have to get from LHR-MUC as there wasn't award seats on that leg. I ended up finding an AAVacations ticket round trip on BA SEA-LHR-AMS-LHR-SEA for $2200. If I had found award space for the return I'd have been out ~$1200 plus 115K miles, it was an easy call to cancel that award.
While an outlier and I think possibly a mistake on BAs part, I just this week booked a First ticket on BA JFK-LHR round trip for $2000, of which only $500 was "fare" the remaining $1500 was taxes/fees. That same award would have cost 170K miles plus $1300+ in taxes as an award. No thanks.

So in my view BA awards are only a good value if you're grabbing them last minute where discounted J tickets aren't available and their revenue tickets are crazy expensive (which BA does quite well) given discounted J tickets are often available for not too much more than the taxes/fees that you pay on top of the miles plus you earn EQM/D and RDMs. The challenge being that BA doesn't often open award space last minute, so the situations where awards on BA make the most sense/value are when you're very unlikely to find any space.

I forgot to add no EQM earning either :D

When BA eventually rolls out their new J/C product to the USA it is a viable option if you want to go that route. Right now it isn’t worth it. BA “club world” looks like Spirit Airlines :p

I won't defend DL's program, but they do not randomly vary pricing every time you search. That's not how their "dynamic" pricing works. The main issue is that the cheapest levels for D1 international (currently 80K each way TATL) have a 90-day advance purchase requirement. These are disclosed in the "fare rules" link when you price out awards. It's not terribly hard to divine the different award levels on a route if you are spend some time searching for different advance periods (and also checking for roundtrips as there are several award levels that require a roundtrip purchase) and reading the fare rules. They actually encode a fair amount of information in their fare basis codes (including the "level" of the award which comes from the coach class letters). Domestically, award levels pretty much vary from route-to-route. Internationally, the levels tend to vary by regions rather than by route to route.

There are certain destinations where it is almost impossible to find low-level award in First or Business. Chief among these are Hawaii, JNB, and SYD.

Aadvantage Dynamic Award Pricing Now Live...
 

According to The Points Guy it looks like it's finally here.....ugh....

https://thepointsguy.com/news/aa-web...-pricing-480k/


Earlier today, we posted an update about American Airlines’ expansion of its “web special” pricing to premium cabins on international routes. In searches this morning, we found some web special awards between the U.S. and Europe that were priced higher than the published award chart. However, we were generally encouraged that award pricing didn’t exceed the unpublished “AAnytime Level 3” rates that have been in place since 2014.

Oh boy, how an afternoon has changed things. As American Airlines rolled out its new “web special” award pricing to all international routes today, we are seeing some extraordinarily higher award prices — in many ways similar to its fellow legacy carriers (Delta and United).

Get ready for some sticker shock.

Can't wait to see some 700,000 Mile Awards!!!!!

Meanwhile, found a JFK-HND/NRT roundtrip in business 5 weeks out for 60k miles each way. So, there's still saver availability out there...

LAX-SYD is only 480,000 ow in business--get them while they are on sale...LOL

Meanwhile I found 2 80K awards to Tokyo next summer from AUS-LAX-HND then HND-ORD-AUS so SAAver awards are still alive!! Just got to check AA everyday!

Last week OKC-SYD was 190k (380k round trip) in J each way. Today, 709k.

Are they on crack?

Wow, AA. You truly do suck. I'm actually pissed that I made platinum this year - what a worthless airline to have status on.

Sure feels like the value of my miles just halved.

I'm really more of a Delta person these days, though, so I'm used to this a bit.

But it does suck.

Is there any plan to devalue partner awards too? Either OneWorld or other partners?

Doug Parker: "Let's copy everything Delta does"
EXPs: "Looking forward to an improvement of in flight experience, IFE, and on time rating!"
Parker: "LOL not like that. Here are 500k business class awards."

AA’s been trying to jack me on award travel on routes where AA and UA are more less interchangeable. This has AA wanting 3 to 6 times the number of miles UA charges for the very same city pairs for flights at nearly the same time of day on the very same dates on relatively similar equipment.