If you are determined to fly Continental metal, you do have to keep checking back on the website twice a day. A Standard seat or two may squirt out here or there, but they'll often be snapped up within hours. It is not unusual to search a dozen different days, times, airports, etc. and never see a single Standard seat.

But -- DL award inventory is much more open, so if you don't mind flying DL and calling the domestic awards desk, you may have much better luck. You can often see some DL options by searching the NW website's awards booking engine, if you have a WorldPerks number.

I just organized some June travel for my mother-in-law, DCA-SEA... scanned the CO website twice a day for a week and could never get a roundtrip together as a Standard award... finally looked on the NW site and saw several DL roundtrips at the Standard 25k level, then called the CO awards desk and they were able to nail down a good DL option immediately for 25k OnePass miles. Give that a try.