Every so often, I think it makes sense to talk a bit about the tools and services that I most use for managing, earning, and redeeming points. While I often mention these websites and services in passing, I think theres also merit to writing dedicated posts about them sometimes.
Continue reading: Seats.aero: How This Fun, Geeky, Useful, Award Search Tool Works
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Useful tool, but not having BritishAir and Iberia is a significant shortcoming
One annoying issue is that seats.aero excludes many routes from the “free” search. I get a message “This route isn't available with free search. Pro members can run live searches between any airports.”
So it’s “free forever” but subject to caveats, exceptions and limitations…
With pro alerts you can specify non-stop, airline, and even flight number. How I scored JAL A350 in F.
Just be advised that frustratingly their results for Qatar Privilege Club do not include the surcharge info. Good redemption opportunities but they do have surcharges in the hundreds of dollars.
The seat alerts are the best way to find unicorn space. I use them regularly to find SQ J availability ex-FRA.
I like seats.aero, but have only been using the free version and I find it frustrating that certain cities are not covered.
For example, I can't search for award flights between LAX and MXP.
Maybe the paid version solves this issue?
BA is missing
Also, it would be nice if we could customise the search by departure time (context: I'm self-employed and always need award space on an 8pm short-haul flight - if it's not available and if the cash rate is too expensive, I travel another day)
Even with the paid version if you're searching the main 3 US Airlines (UA, DL, AA), you'll need to change the filter to allow dynamically priced awards, otherwise it'll filter out DL and UA and you'll only get AA itineraries.
Not always. I've had DL and UA pull up on both domestic and international itineraries without ever toggling that option. I never even knew it was there until you brought it up! LOL!
True. I found economy space on AS with Qatar Privilege Club between HND and HNL. It was the cheapest points option by far, but the surcharge was unknown until I started the checkout, and definitely more than what Atmos was charging. Wish I waited a few weeks to take advantage of the current transfer bonus from Chase.
I prefer seats.aero over Roame. I believe the results are better and faster. Roame is nice as it shows the cost when a transfer bonus is available. Seats.aero also only gives alerts on direct flights (not as helpful for me since I'm based in HNL and often need a transfer to get where I want to go). But in general, seats.aero gets me most of the information I want faster and am willing to pay for the pro version. I got a discount during black friday last November.
I use Pointsyeah.com. Very user-friendly interface and you get 100% functionality for free.
That is definitely some feedback they've been getting and looking into. I will say that Seats is the tool that adapts the fastest to make additions.
Avianca? You mention it in the beginning of the post, but I thought access was lost to it? I stopped using it once Avianca was no longer accessible.
There are a lot of lesser known things seats can do as well.
You can view seatmaps for a lot of airlines as well as fareclass. You're also able to set up alerts for specific seats and/or fares which can help when upgrading or looking for avail.
The timatic-visa checks are always helpful nowadays because so many destinations may require a visa, ETA, health docs, travel insurance etc.
If you enable "Show individual flights" in our Search tool, this unlocks the ability to filter by departure time! We also launched alert filters for departure/arrival time yesterday.
I really like this app. The sorting and filtering are totally awesome.
The best feature as a very frquent flyer (retired, so flexible on travel dates) is that it shows routings that I would never have considered, e.g. USA to BKK on Ethipian on a350 flights or SAS for the same.
BA awards are all there under different programmes. Just do the math on what BA will charge for it, but the availability is generally there across QR, AA, AY
Any info on why seatmaps omit certain classes?
Quick look at BA012, biz is completely missing (i'm on a pro plan)
No BA coverage and not sure how well they deal with VS variable pricing. My go to is SeatSpy.com - covers both and very nice easy at-a-glance view across the year. Also great for 'where can I go' questions when you've got a date range in mind.