I’m writing a series of posts about some of the tools and services I most use for managing, earning, and redeeming points. While I often mention these websites and services in passing, I’ve never written dedicated posts about them, so that’s what I’m trying to do now.
In this post I wanted to talk about how and why I use Seats.aero, which is an award search tool that’s useful even if you’re an advanced miles and points geek. In separate posts I talked about Google Flights, AwardWallet, ExpertFlyer, point.me, MaxMyPoint, aeroLOPA, and more.
In this post:
What is Seats.aero?
Seats.aero is an award search tool that will show you award availability across entire regions, allows you to search with instant results, and also allows you to create free alerts to find award flights. Seats.aero supports 13 frequent flyer programs, and it can be awesome if you’re looking for a premium cabin award that can be hard to get, whether that’s a Lufthansa first class award seat, or a Qatar Airways business class award seat.
As far as award search tools go, I’d say that Seats.aero and point.me are kind of opposites:
- Seats.aero is most useful for those of us who are huge points nerds, and who know exactly how rewards currencies work, and know exactly what we’re looking for
- point.me is most useful for everyone else (which is a much smaller portion of our community, but a much bigger portion of the overall population), as it demystifies the world of first and business class redemptions, with a comprehensive search tool that walks you through the process of booking
How much does Seats.aero cost?
One awesome thing about Seats.aero is that you can use the site for free, though with limited capabilities. Still, I’d say the free services can add a lot of value. Alternatively, you can buy a pro plan for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. That offers the following three primary incremental perks (in addition to supporting the site):
- The ability to search award space for a full year, rather than only 60 days in advance
- The ability to create alerts with advanced filters
- The ability to receive text notifications for alerts, rather than just email notifications
How do you use Seats.aero?
What makes Seats.aero unique is that you don’t actually perform any award searches individually. Instead, Seats.aero refreshes all award availability for its supported programs several times per day, and then you can essentially search the database to see what’s available. That’s awesome in terms of how quickly you can search availability.
The catch is that since these searches aren’t performed in real time, award availability may not always be accurate. So always cross reference what you see on Seats.aero with the program you’d book through, so that you don’t transfer points based on availability that’s no longer there. Some premium cabin award seats can disappear really quickly. Let’s take a look at all of this in a bit more detail.
Seats.aero supports 13 frequent flyer programs
Seats.aero currently searches award space through 13 frequent flyer programs, most of which partner with major transferable points currencies. These programs include the following:
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue
- Alaska Mileage Plan
- American AAdvantage
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- SAS EuroBonus
- United MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Virgin Australia Velocity
Seats.aero specific route award finders
When you go to the “Routes” section of Seats.aero, you can click on any of the above programs, and then see award availability on a variety of routes over a wide set of dates. For example, say you select Emirates Skywards as the program.
You’ll see a list of all routes that Seats.aero has award availability for on Emirates.
You can further customize this by just typing an airport code into the search bar at the top right. For example, I entered “IAH,” so I could see award availability to and from Houston. On the next page I could select which direction I want to see availability for, and could then click “Find availability.”
You’ll then see a chronological display with all dates that have award availability.
You can also sort this by class of service. By clicking on the “First” column, I could see all the dates in the next 60 days with first class award availability (with a paid subscription, you could see availability for a whole year).
Seats.aero specific product award finders
One of my favorite things about Seats.aero is that if you go to the “Tools” section, you’ll see several search options that are specific to certain products. For example, there’s a Lufthansa first class finder, and a Qatar Airways business class finder.
If you click the “Lufthansa First Class Finder,” you’ll see a chronological list of all Lufthansa flights that have first class award availability.
It will default to showing all routes, but in the top right you’ll see a search tool, where you can type in an airport code, if you want to narrow down results to a single airport. For example, I typed in “IAD,” to see award availability to and from that airport.
A similar feature exists for Qatar Airways business class, where you’ll see a chronological list of all Qatar Airways business class awards.
Much like with Lufthansa, you can enter an airport code, and then you’ll see options narrowed down to that airport. You can also search by region, under the “Show flights from” section.
Seats.aero award alerts
Seats.aero allows you to create free award alerts, which is awesome. However, this doesn’t work the same way as award alerts with ExpertFlyer, for example. With Seats.aero award alerts, you can specify the program, the date of travel, the origin, the destination, and the class of service.
You’ll then be alerted when Seats.aero finds any available itinerary. For example, if you set an alert for Boston to Doha (hoping for nonstop availability), you’ll be alerted if there’s any award route that becomes available between the two cities. This could include a British Airways routing through London, or an American and Qatar Airways routing through another city. There’s no way to request to only be alerted if a nonstop flight becomes available.
So this can be really useful, just have the right expectations.
Bottom line
If you’re someone who loves searching for award availability, then absolutely add a bookmark to Seats.aero. The service constantly refreshes award availability across over a dozen frequent flyer programs, and then presents that availability in an easy to understand way.
This site can even be used for free with some limitations, and it can be a great way to find some of the more unicorn awards out there, whether it’s Lufthansa first class or Qatar Airways business class.
Like I said, this isn’t a tool I’d recommend sending to your friend who is just learning how to use points. However, for those of us who know what we’re doing, Seats.aero can save you time, and also just generally be fun to browse to get an overall sense of award availability trends.
If you’ve used Seats.aero, what was your experience like?
Maybe I am missing something in the “alert” function . I use Qantas or Virgin points / miles and thus have restricted access to American Airlines and Alaskan award seats.
Even though both airlines offer award flights at varying mileage requirements , only those in certain classes are available to me and no doubt other non North American flyers - eg "E" for business on AS or “U” for business / first on AA.
Maybe I am missing something in the “alert” function . I use Qantas or Virgin points / miles and thus have restricted access to American Airlines and Alaskan award seats.
Even though both airlines offer award flights at varying mileage requirements , only those in certain classes are available to me and no doubt other non North American flyers - eg "E" for business on AS or “U” for business / first on AA.
I can see these on a "daily" search but cannot find a way to put in a alert request say for "E" seats on Alaskan.
Am I missing something otherwise this issue must be a problem for non Americans trying to set up alerts for these airlines for example .
I like seats.aero too but recently found PointsYeah and already booked two flights using info from the free version. Today, they sent me a special offer of $59.99 (regular $89.99) for annual subscription using code YEAH (expires Oct 8). You can search and create twenty one different single day alerts or three 7 day alerts or any combination in between.
Would be good if seats.aero included British airways avios searches. I guess there’s a reason why they aren’t offering this at the moment. Great to see qantas frequent flyer program included in the search options.
The site is brilliant. I have signed up for the pro sub. I have test checked quite a few long haul flights showing up on seats.aero and they do indeed show up on the airline sites. I disagree that this site is for advanced mile and points people. Anyone doing this hobby properly is by definition and geek. It does NOT take long to pick up.
The long haul flights are the ones that...
The site is brilliant. I have signed up for the pro sub. I have test checked quite a few long haul flights showing up on seats.aero and they do indeed show up on the airline sites. I disagree that this site is for advanced mile and points people. Anyone doing this hobby properly is by definition and geek. It does NOT take long to pick up.
The long haul flights are the ones that people are searching for so it’s an incredibly useful site for getting value out of your points..well done to the developer. It outperforms all the other points searching sites.
Interesting. I just did a search SEA-HND and there is a column for economy and a column for premium economy but no columns for business or first. What am I doing wrong?
And just did a search SEA-DOH and same thing. No results other the. Economy and premium economy. If I can’t search business this is worthless to me.
Hi Robert, I run Seats.aero and we definitely track business/first! In our Search tool, we automatically hide columns that have no results at all. For your search, there was presumably just nothing available in higher cabins. When your search includes results in business/first, these columns will automatically appear.
Can one do searches by a city with more than one airport? E.g., IAD-TYO, using "TYO" for all Tokyo airports; another example, "WAS" for Washington DC, etc. I'm presuming not, but it would be a nice enhancement someday.
Either way, this tool looks exceptionally cool, and I'm 99% sure I'll be signing up for the Pro version.
Thanks for the writeup, Ben!
Hi TravelinWilly, I run Seats.aero and we do support these in our Search tool! We support a variety of custom airport codes (including things like EUR and USA), and you can add as many airport codes to your search as you want at once.
@Ian Carroll: Do you track short international routes? TPE-HKG for 10/02/ 2023 shows no award availability on seats.aero, 2 seats in business for 14500 AF miles each on airfrance.com
I don't book a lot of award tickets, but the United PZ availability tool might make a subscription worth it for me. Is there any demo of this feature? Ideally, I would love something where for a particular date I could find all available trans-Atlantic PZ space to/from EWR, ORD and IAD.
When I first stumbled across Seats.aero late last year (looking to fly Lufthansa First Class for the first time), I worried it was the "endgame" for points & miles where a critical mass of ppl can easily find awards and it becomes a "can you grab it first" race.
Thankfully, that hasn't been the case and except for the Qantas First Class awards (which I booked 1 thanks to the site), most of the stuff...
When I first stumbled across Seats.aero late last year (looking to fly Lufthansa First Class for the first time), I worried it was the "endgame" for points & miles where a critical mass of ppl can easily find awards and it becomes a "can you grab it first" race.
Thankfully, that hasn't been the case and except for the Qantas First Class awards (which I booked 1 thanks to the site), most of the stuff that shows up sits around for days, if not weeks. Granted, I only have the free version up to 2 months out, and I've come to believe that "no matter what", so few ppl can plan truly last minute that seats like those will "always" be available.
However, I have heard of stuff like ANA First/Biz awards reach an "endgame" state where ppl call in at the specified time of day 330 days in advance... which I am absolutely not willing to compete with LOL
Thanks @Ian and others for the tool, we are definitely better off with than without it as a community!
I agree it is a fun, geeky website that mostly helps you find nonstop international flights from major cities only.
It will come in handy for people with a lot of free time who can plan a last minute trip (e.g., whenever a first class seat opens up) or willing to go to a major city to catch an available flight.
The website has many loyal followers and is rapidly expanding and putting...
I agree it is a fun, geeky website that mostly helps you find nonstop international flights from major cities only.
It will come in handy for people with a lot of free time who can plan a last minute trip (e.g., whenever a first class seat opens up) or willing to go to a major city to catch an available flight.
The website has many loyal followers and is rapidly expanding and putting several other popular search engines to shame.
I hope the developer soon incorporates a traditional search engine where all airport codes are supported, including connecting flights where the alerts for the Pro members will be of immense help!
Intra-Europe international nonstop flights are also not trackable at this time. It is a big omission.
Between this & point.me, curious to know what major transferable partners are missing, and should be searched separately? I see the list of the programs which do participate, but I'm not close enought to quickly see where there are gaps.
I tried this the other week, there is one massive downfall. Many smaller cities are not included. I don't see anything anywhere on their site saying what the criteria are, but trying doing a search to a smaller or even mid sized place and it simply says the airport doesn't exist. Some examples... ABQ, CHS, MEM, MDW, MKE, RSW, SAT, SAV, SRQ, the list goes on. I was looking at getting to one of the...
I tried this the other week, there is one massive downfall. Many smaller cities are not included. I don't see anything anywhere on their site saying what the criteria are, but trying doing a search to a smaller or even mid sized place and it simply says the airport doesn't exist. Some examples... ABQ, CHS, MEM, MDW, MKE, RSW, SAT, SAV, SRQ, the list goes on. I was looking at getting to one of the NPs before fall really sets in and JAC, BZN, FCA etc don't exist either. Will have to stick to expertflyer for that.
Same issue. Won’t even pull flights for MSP…
Interesting. I had no issue with MSP, was able to see availability to CDG, AMS etc as well as domestic. I tried some smaller European cities and same issue there too
Hey Tom, I run Seats.aero and you’re definitely correct. We largely focus on international routes for two reasons: there’s only so many routes we can feasibly track, and even if we did track small domestic routes, the US aviation market relies heavily on connecting flights, which are hard for us to let you search at the moment. For example, we could track MKE to ATL, but probably most travelers aren’t trying to search only to...
Hey Tom, I run Seats.aero and you’re definitely correct. We largely focus on international routes for two reasons: there’s only so many routes we can feasibly track, and even if we did track small domestic routes, the US aviation market relies heavily on connecting flights, which are hard for us to let you search at the moment. For example, we could track MKE to ATL, but probably most travelers aren’t trying to search only to Atlanta.
However, Pro users can request most domestic routes now, and we’re working on some cool stuff to let you search connecting flights instantly which will help! (For example, if we track MKE/ATL and ATL/SFO, we’ll try to combine them instantly based on the rules of the mileage program.)
To add to this, I'm not a seasoned expertflyer user, but from what I can tell it's very clunky to set alerts if you say want to fly between two major cities and have some flexibility in dates. You have to set an alert for every flight, which between two major city pairs could be 10 flights a day over several days.
Robert this tool is more for international redemptions and not domestic as it's a lot of data to process. There may be trans-con premium like NYC-LAX/SFO etc since that's in more demand than smaller routes.
Even then the route you want may not be available (LHR-BOM or ZRH-ICN for example)
There is a way (I believe for Pro Users) to request specific routes so it's added. I think it's primarily just one software developer working...
Robert this tool is more for international redemptions and not domestic as it's a lot of data to process. There may be trans-con premium like NYC-LAX/SFO etc since that's in more demand than smaller routes.
Even then the route you want may not be available (LHR-BOM or ZRH-ICN for example)
There is a way (I believe for Pro Users) to request specific routes so it's added. I think it's primarily just one software developer working on this and I consider it to be in constant Beta, always changing and upgrading.
Excellent Write up Ben. It provides enough detail to get people interested in the service without being too technical or complex. I'm grandfathered as a Pro User at the $69/yr price, and think it provides enough value to keep. The developer keeps expanding services pro users can perform, and has "deep links" taking you to the airlines website directly often times to where you can book it.
Its not perfect and can have errors,...
Excellent Write up Ben. It provides enough detail to get people interested in the service without being too technical or complex. I'm grandfathered as a Pro User at the $69/yr price, and think it provides enough value to keep. The developer keeps expanding services pro users can perform, and has "deep links" taking you to the airlines website directly often times to where you can book it.
Its not perfect and can have errors, but I enjoy using it. If this was around 5-10 years ago....man oh man..
Thank you! Did not know about this tool, but love it now.
There's an "Only direct flights" option for alerts under "Advanced filters", though it's for Pro users only.
This has become my go to, and the Discord community is really pretty awesome too!