A bit of perspective regarding use of AA miles from one who has lifetime Platinum status and 4 million miles on my record. As noted above, the merger with USAir and the incorporation of their users has made a bad situation worse. If you need to travel to Albuquerque, Nashville, or other similar venues, you should have minimal issues using your miles. Traveling to/from Dallas, New York, Las Vegas,Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, your options are basically:

1)Forget the notion of a 25K round trip unless you book the 331 days in advance and are prepared to travel at 0600 or 2300 hrs.
2)Bite the bullet and cough up 50K miles for a coach ticket (or look closely at business/first class availability as you can occasionally get a business/first class mileage ticket for the same 50K miles)

If you look at seat availability for most flights booked months in advance, there are plenty of seats for paying customers. AA miles tickets are rigidly rationed early in the booking period. As the time gets closer to the actual departure date, some miles tickets are opened up-but clearly a risk if you are trying to book a bad schedule with hopes to get a change to a better flight.