How To Use Seats.aero To Find Award Availability

It used to be that award space in premium cabins could be quite a time-consuming process that involved scouring multiple websites, calendars, and award charts.

To combat that, several award search engines have been built in the last few years to help award travelers have a more streamlined process when searching for award tickets, which resembles more of the process you’d go through when searching for a flight using cash. Seats.aero is one such award search website, and it also happens to be one of the very best tools on the market.

In this guide, we will provide you with a full breakdown of seats.aero works, its features, and how you can use it to start locking down award tickets for yourself.

What Is Seats.aero?

Put simply, Seats.aero is a search engine for award travel. This means you can input searches for where you’re traveling to and from, the dates you want to travel, and more advanced filters that we will discuss later, and receive search results of the award availability across over 20 airline programs that you can book your award ticket through.

Seats.aero Price

Anyone can use Seats.aero for free. The free version of the site is useful, but the paid version has features that are more in-depth.

By far the biggest reason to subscribe to Seats.aero pro is the ability to search flight award availability up to 365 days in advance. This is especially useful if you like using your points and miles to book business and first class awards, where the best availability is usually found booking far in advance, sometimes up to a year out.

How To Use Seats.aero

Seats.aero has quite a few useful features that can make your life easier when searching for award flights.

Here is a look at each one and how you can use it to your advantage.

Programs

Seats.aero’s search covers over 20 different airline loyalty programs, encompassing Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and Oneworld.

Airline programs include:

If you’re still new to the world of booking award tickets using your miles, you might have paused here to note that there are many airlines that aren’t included in this list of 24 programs.

However, this list of programs does not mean you’re limited to only booking award tickets flying that airline, but rather that you’ll see availability across that airline, and all of its partners, that is bookable using that program’s miles.

If that is starting to make your eyes glaze over, let’s go through a quick example of how it works in practice.

Let’s say you want to travel from New York to Switzerland on SWISS business class cabin on the way there. If the SWISS Miles&Smiles program isn’t featured on Seats.aero, are you out of luck? Not at all.

As you can see from the above search result, you can use the Air Canada Aeroplan program, a Star Alliance partner, to book a business class flight from New York City (JFK) to Geneva (GVA), for 60,000 Aeroplan points. Better yet, the Air Canada Aeroplan program is a 1:1 transfer partner of most major transferable reward currencies, including Amex Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and more.

Explore

The Explore function works great when you have a specific type of points you want to redeem, but maybe you’re not sure yet when you want to travel or even where you want to travel.

Using the Explore function, you must first select an airline. Then choose the regions to fly to or from and go through the results.

In this example, we’ve selected American Airlines AAdvantage miles, and want to fly from Chicago (ORD) to anywhere in Europe up to a year out from now.

Once you’ve performed that search, you receive your results with quite a few different items you can sort and filter by. This includes:

• Date of travel
• Last seen: Confirms how long it’s been since Seats.aero saw that the award was available
• Departure airport
• Arrival airport
• Cabin class: economy, premium economy, business, or first class
• Color: Green indicates a direct flight, blue indicates a flight with connections.
• Search: Allows you to type in a date or an airport code to narrow down results
• Information button: Displays detailed information on your search results, including flight number and airline

You can click to sort by any of these items, like the date of departure or business class availability, for instance. You have additional filter tools, as well, like departure airport, arrival airport, what airlines you’re willing to fly, the maximum points you’re willing to pay, the days of the week you’re willing to travel, and whether you’re willing to have a connecting flight.

Explore works great for travelers who have a lot of flexibility, both with when they travel and where they travel. For instance, in the above example, we can see that there are economy award flights available using American Airlines miles to Dublin (DUB), Rome (FCO), and London (LHR) on varying dates.

Of course, that is just what is seen in the screenshot; the actual search also yielded flights to Athens (ATH), Barcelona (BCN), Madrid (MAD), Naples (NAP), Paris (CDG), and more.

If you prioritize paying the lowest price possible for your award ticket or only want to travel when you can secure a business class award ticket, then using the Explore tools is tailor-made for you.

Bottom Line:

The Explore function lets you filter through airline’s award seats, which makes it great for finding low-priced or hard-to-find awards — but could be overwhelming for some.

Search

Alternatively, Seats.aero offers a Search function, which allows you to be more specific with when and where you want to fly but also provides you with results across all of the eligible programs on Seats.aero.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to travel from Los Angeles (LAX) to London Heathrow next year in September.

Your results are pretty similar to what we previously saw with the Explore function, with an important addition: program.

In addition to all of the other useful details like date of travel, availability, and price, the program function tells you which program you need to book this award through — in other words, the type of miles you will need to have in order to book this award.

In the above search, we can see that we can book a business class ticket from Los Angeles to London using a variety of award programs, including Finnair, Qantas, Qatar, and Virgin Atlantic.

Seats.aero limits how much information you can pull per hour for live searches, as seen on the green loading bar.

Search also has separate filters from Explore, including:

• Origin and departure airports: You can enter a single airport code, such as LAX, but you can also put in regions, states, or airline hubs.
• Earlier and later days: Search multiple dates at once, up to 180 days in either direction.
• Individual flights: Gives you flight numbers and departure times in your search results.
• Programs: Select which airline programs to use.
• Alliance: Filter by airline alliance.
• Transfer partners: Filter by which credit card points you want to use.
• Points: Set a maximum number of points (up to 200,000).
• Days: Set days of the week for travel.
• Stops: Limit flights by number of stops (up to 3).
• Duration: Set a maximum duration of travel (up to 48 hours).
• Aircraft: Filter flights by operating aircraft.
• Connections: Choose your connecting airports.

All of these filters are free to use, but some filters are exclusive to paid users.

This is especially useful if you’re trying to avoid booking an award ticket with an airline that charges high fees on award tickets, like British Airways.

• Direct flights: Exclude connecting flights.
• Fee limits: Exclude flights with high fees.
• Minimum number of seats: Specify how many seats must be available.
• Operating carriers: Limit which airlines you see.
• Cabin filter: Show the results with your specified cabin class.

Bottom Line:

The powerful search function on Seats.aero looks across regions with up to 180 days of flexibility and can home in on specific dates and routes.

Other Tools That Help Find Award Availability

Explore and the search function are the primary uses of Seats.aero, but the website also offers pretty useful tools to travelers looking for the most difficult premium award products.

Namely, this includes:

• ANA first class finder
• Delta One finder
• Japan Airlines first class finder
• Lufthansa first class finder
• Qatar Qsuite tool

Essentially, all of these tools function the same way, with the explicit purpose of locating the most premium award space available on the carrier, whether it be Japan Airlines first class or Qatar Airways Qsuite.

Here is an example of how that would work using the ANA first class finder, which searches for ANA space on all available routes.

Bottom Line:

If you’re trying to locate dates when there is award availability for the best first- and business-class products in the sky, these tools can make it significantly easier than spending hours and hours combing through award calendars across multiple programs.

Alerts

Let’s say you’ve done an award search for the specific destination you want to fly to on a specific date, but there was either no availability or the current availability didn’t work for you.

You’re not out of luck. Assuming you’re searching far enough in advance, Seats.aero allows you to set alerts for flights at no cost.

That said, while it is free to set alerts, you need a Pro account if you want to set alerts more than 60 days in advance. There is no limit to the number of alerts you can set, and the alerts are automatically deleted after you’re notified.

To set an alert, enter your email address, the mileage program you plan to book with, departure and arrival airports, travel dates, and cabin class.

If you have a pro account, you have access to additional features, like:

• Alerts for a date range or even any date
• SMS text message alerts in addition to email
• Alerts up to a year in advance

Paid users also get more filters:

• Minimum number of award seats available
• Maximum cost in points and/or fees
• Maximum number of stops
• Fare class
• Operating carrier
• Specific flight number

Bottom Line:

While award alerts are free for all users, those with a Pro subscription receive significantly more filters and features that make their alerts more useful.

Other Useful Features and Routes

These tools and features don’t necessarily help you book award tickets but are worth knowing about, as they can help enhance your trip in other ways.

• Air Canada eUpgrade finder helps you find availability for Air Canada eUpgrades.
• Award release dates let you review how far out each carrier releases flights for a given mileage program.
• CPM Explorer shows itineraries with a very low cost per mile flown.
• Emirates upgrade finder helps you find upgrade inventory for Emirates to business and first class.
• Fare class viewer allows you to view the available fare classes of any scheduled flight from global distribution systems (GDS).
• Fare viewer allows you to view the published fares of any scheduled flight from GDS.
• Great Circle Map maps your total flight distance.
• JetBlue Move to Mint Finder helps you find availability for JetBlue’s Move to Mint upgrades.
• Points or cash calculator helps you determine whether to book an award redemption or pay cash for your next flight or hotel.
• Routes shows the routes that are being tracked for availability with a given program.
• Seam map viewer displays the seat map of any scheduled flight from GDS.
• Timatic is the airline’s authority on visa and entry requirements. Use Timatic to ensure you have the right documentation for your next flight.
• United upgrade and PlusPoints finder helps you find availability in United’s special fare classes for mileage and PlusPoints upgrades.

Bottom Line:

Seats.aero isn’t just useful for helping you book award tickets but also offers tools that help you find upgrade availability, bookable routes, dates that awards are released by airline programs, seat maps, and more.

Final Thoughts

Seats.aero is arguably the best website out there for finding award availability, especially if you’re looking to book highly sought-after business and first class flights.

Although it does have a bit of a learning curve and the interface can be confusing if you’re new to booking award tickets, it is well worth spending the time to learn how to use it effectively, as the amount of tools and features it offers can save you countless hours when booking award tickets.