UA recently dumped those fees. Admittedly that's the one I'm most familiar with... I was kind of hoping others might match them - I'm lookin' at you, AA.

I think DL or CO has a credit card that you can acquire that comes with near-in award booking as a benefit. Of course, the card probably has an annual fee so you'd have to decide whether the collection of benefits offered is really worth it to you.

WN and some of the other non-legacy U.S. carriers have no close-in booking fees.