[Update] You can still see them on the old Calendar. Yesterday I went on AA.COM to look for flights from China to the U.S. near the end of the year, and found that I could only search AA-operated flights. Whether in economy or business class, I couldn’t see partner award space on airlines like CX and JL. On some Asia-Europe routes that are only operated by partner airlines, it even directly showed no available flights.
And before 10/21/2020, no award flights show up at all!
Earlier this week, award searches were displaying normally, but it changed to this over the past two days. Personally, I don’t think this is an IT issue. Rather, AA is intentionally blocking partner award redemptions, which would reduce its expenses and liabilities. After all, most people redeem partner awards for premium-cabin tickets. AA’s situation really does not look optimistic, and there may be more AA accounts getting shut down in the future.
There is one piece of good news, though: early next year there is discounted one-way AA business class availability connecting in DFW for only 45,000. That’s still a very good price, so if you really need it, it may be worth booking.