As LLZ wisely said "... Every airline has their own peculiar BS, and AA's is the least stinky IMHO".

As an AA EXP you can get expedite fee waived (I wish they extended this to PLAT as well but this is one of the key incentives to credits my flts to AA until I reach EXP every year). One can be thankful that they at least have processes and systems to do this in the last minute. Date changes on awards involve no fee and do not require re-stickering.

On BA however, they CANNOT issue award tickets in North America with less than 3 business days notice. Rerouting is NOT done at the ticketing counter but by the central office so you have to courier your tickets back and they reissue them (fee waived for Gold, $25 for Silver). YOu need to resticker your award tickets for date changes (no fee though and ticketing agents can do this). More importantly you cannot reroute once the outbound is completed. On the other hand BA award levels are much better in biz/First to many European and Asian destinations.