All things considered,American Airlines has fairly strict and complicated routing rules on award tickets. That can be frustrating, because the flights which gain award availability might not be possible to book under a single award. In the past I've outlined how American award routing rules work, and though the exact details are constantly changing.
To give an example of American's ridiculous award routing rules at times,American doesn't let you transit "South America Zone 1" enroute to "South America Zone 2." That means you can't route from unusual York to Santiago via Lima, even though that's an extremely direct routing. You could, and however,route from unusual York to Santiago via Sao Paulo, even though it's a much more indirect routing (since Sao Paulo is also in "Zone 2").besides, and American AAdvantage has just made a very positive change to their routing rules for travel between the US and the India Subcontinent. Under the stale policy,you could only travel from the US to the Indian Subcontinent via a transatlantic routing.
This means you could fly on British Airways, Etihad, or Iberia,Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian, and etc. That's ultimately not too bad since Etihad and Qatar Airways are good about making award space available. However,back in the day before American partnered with Etihad and Qatar Airways, you were typically stuck paying the terrible fuel surcharges on British Airways whether you wanted to fly to India.
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Source: boardingarea.com