I had recently been looking at booking an American Airlines flight for FWA to NYC and was amazed at the wild swings in points needed throughout the day on a particular flight pair that I was searching over a 2 week period. I did find that the majority of the time that early in the day it would be cheaper and also midweek vs weekend searches. I did use multi device to make sure that it was not tracking cookies to cause an increase during the day.

Over the whole 2 week search period multiple times a day the flight pair ranged from 59.5 K miles to 75 K miles. The biggest swing was this past Thursday for this flight pair; it was 66.5 K in the morning- 65.5 K in the afternoon and 75 K in the evening, then first thing on Friday morning it was 60 K.

It's almost like someone needs to write a program that constantly runs the city pairs or flight pairs and you set a buy order like a stock when the price drops to what you are willing to pay in points. At least in the old days with AA awards or AA Savers you knew to go on right after midnight to see if any lower priced awards were made available, but this 24/7 constant price changing minute by minute is a bit crazy.