Travelers looking to use their airline miles to fly last-minute domestically can face an array of grim prospects. That’s especially true now that awards are tied to cash prices more closely than ever — and those cash prices tend to skyrocket within a few weeks of travel.

However, one program has been such a consistent source of last-minute deals for me that I now use its miles almost exclusively for booking domestic flights leaving within a few days: American Airlines AAdvantage.

American Airlines’ valuable sweet spot

American Airlines announced it was getting rid of award charts for its own flights in April 2023, which on the surface sounds like bad news but in practice didn’t change much, since they were already effectively using dynamic pricing.

In theory, that dynamic pricing extends to last-minute award pricing, which means that award prices should go up for last-minute fares.

Yet, in researching dozens of flights over the past couple of years, I’ve found American AAdvantage to be the only U.S.-based award program that consistently offers convenient, low-priced options within about a week of departure for domestic flights.

(Last-minute international award flights on American are another story.)