Maximize Travel: Find Award Flight Availability Using Roame Today

Airline award availability can be difficult to chase, especially since it appears and disappears so rapidly. That’s why tools such as Roame can be so helpful. Rather than needing to sift through individual airline websites, Roame gathers together live award availability in a single search, streamlining the process and saving you time.

In this thorough guide, we’ll take a look at what Roame offers, how much it costs to use, and how it stacks up to competitors.

What Is Roame?

To put it simply, Roame is a tool that helps you search for airline award availability. It saves you time by searching multiple airline programs at once, meaning you won’t need to comb through results a page at a time.

It’s among the best airline search tools due to its flexibility and the benefits it provides to free members.

Competitors such as point.me don’t offer a free option, while Seats.aero limits free users to search results just 60 days in advance. Roame beats out both of these with free searches a whole year in advance, though you do need to sign up for a membership to access the site.

How Much Does Roame Cost?

Roame has 3 levels of membership, though most folks will only be interested in the first 2, as the third is geared toward enterprises.

What Loyalty Programs Does Roame Cover?

Roame covers 22 loyalty programs across all 3 major airline alliances, including SkyTeam, Star Alliance, and Oneworld:

Those who’ve redeemed points and miles before will be glad to see the names on this list, which is comprehensive and covers many of the best loyalty programs, including Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Air Canada Aeroplan, American Airlines AAdvantage, and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, all of which are known for their generous award charts.

However, some important names are missing, especially those that are less common but can offer good redemptions to those in the know, such as Cathay Pacific Cathay.

What Credit Card Programs Does Roame Cover?

Roame searches more credit card reward programs than the competition, including 8 different issuers:

• American Express Membership Rewards
• Bilt Rewards
• Brex Rewards
• Capital One Miles
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Citi ThankYou Rewards
• Marriott Bonvoy
• Ramp Rewards

For anyone familiar with points and miles, this is certainly an interesting list. Most of the major transferable point currencies are on there, though Wells Fargo Rewards (a relatively new currency) is missing.

While we can question the usability of including Brex Rewards (which has repeatedly devalued its points since its heyday) or Ramp Rewards (which launched a transferable points currency just last year and doesn’t have a great transfer ratio), it’s better to have more issuers than fewer.

We especially like to see Marriott Bonvoy on here. For the unfamiliar, Marriott Bonvoy has allowed its members to convert their points to airline miles ever since it acquired Starwood Preferred Guest. Although this ability has devalued over the years, it can still be valuable for currencies that don’t otherwise have transferable partners.

How To Use Roame To Find Award Flights

To access Roame, you need to sign up for a free membership, which involves registering with your email and password. While this is annoying, it’s understandable for security reasons.

To search for flights using Roame, head to Roame’s homepage and log in to your account.

You can enter your search information, including:

• Departure airport
• Arrival airport
• Cabin class
• Number of passengers
• Departure date

As a free member, you can choose to search with a 3-day window, while paid members can utilize a 7-day search window:

You can also toggle on SkyView, which uses cached results to give you broader search features.

Once you hit the search button, you’ll be taken to the search result page:

Here you see all of the flights available for booking, as well as a heap of information:

• Whether the cabin is mixed
• Best miles to use for booking
• Layover information
• Flight time
• Operating airline
• Whether there’s an overnight flight
• How to transfer points to book

You can also filter your results in a variety of ways, including:

• Credit card points
• Airline loyalty programs
• Number of stops
• Percentage that must be in premium
• Maximum fees
• Maximum points
• Operating airlines
• Connecting airports
• Aircraft type

Finally, you can sort your flights in a few different ways:

• Lowest points
• Last updated
• Departure time
• Flight duration
• Roame’s pick

This is especially helpful since you may be focused on spending the fewest points on some flights while on others, you may want to arrive as quickly as possible.

Once you’ve found a flight that you like, click Book:

You’ll be taken directly to the airline’s website to book your flight, and the search will be replicated for you (in most cases):

As you can see, it’s fairly simple to use Roame to find flights, and the ability to click a button and be directed to the airline’s results is helpful. This feature is missing from some competitors, such as point.me.

Bottom Line:

Finding award flights with Roame is simple, and an intuitive interface packed with information means you have all the tools you need to book your flight.

How To Use Roame SkyView

Roame SkyView is an extremely powerful tool that lets you search multiple dates and regions at a time for flights.

While it doesn’t complete a live search, it does give you a broad overview of flights that are likely available to book. This is very similar to Seats.aero’s region-searching feature. Its strength lies in its ability to search huge swaths of airports and dates at a time.

From there, you can refine your search to include live results.

Using SkyView is simple. You can either head over to the dedicated SkyView page or use the SkyView toggle when searching on the home page.

Much like a live search, you put in your search information, including where you’re flying and the cabin class:

Free users can search a 7-day window within the next 60 days. Those with a paid membership can search a 60-day window for the entire year.

Free users can also only search single airports, while those with a pro account can complete regional searches or even searches to anywhere.

One particularly nice feature of SkyView is that it operates much like Google Flights, showing you recent flight costs on a calendar rather than forcing you to complete a search. This isn’t a feature you find on other sites:

Again, it’s important to note that SkyView uses cached results. This means you can end up with fairly old flights when you complete a search.

In the example above, these flights were last found 19 hours ago. In the world of award travel, that could mean that they’re gone entirely. And for sought-after awards, such as ANA first class or Qantas first class, it definitely means that the results aren’t accurate.

Therefore, don’t get your hopes up for any SkyView results until you can verify them for yourself.

Still, the fact that you can use SkyView at all, even as a free member, is pretty cool.

Other Roame Features

Roame isn’t just limited to live searches and SkyView. It also offers access to the Discover portal, as well as the ability to set alerts.

Discover

Like point.me and Points.yeah, Roame also offers the Discover page. This lets you set your departure airport, select a few dates, set your preferred programs, and choose your cabin class.

Discover then shows you all the best deals from your airport (or all cities) that it’s found in the last few days:

And just like point.me and PointsYeah, Roame’s Discover page is largely useless.

Yes, it’s beautiful to look at. And it showcases great deals. But if you thought the SkyView results were out of date, that’s nothing compared to Discover. What are we going to do with a flight award that was found 2 full days ago?

It’s a great place to find inspiration for travel, but other than that, Discover isn’t helpful.

Alerts

Probably the most helpful feature of Roame is its ability to set alerts. That should seem like a standard feature for an airline award website, and it is among most of them, but point.me is notably lacking when it comes to alerts.

Roame offers alerts to those with a paid membership. No matter your parameters, you get 5 alerts to set.

To set up an alert, head over to the SkyView section.

From here, do the search for the flight for which you’d like an alert:

You simply need to click Create Alert, and that’s it. An alert will be set up for you:

It’s important to note that before you set an alert, you’ll want to set the parameters on your SkyView search. As you can see in the screenshot above, you have several ways to filter your alert:

• Departure airport
• Arrival airport
• Travel dates (can set a 90-day window)
• Cabin class
• Number of stops
• How much of the flight must be in premium class
• How many passengers
• The airline loyalty program you’re looking for
• The maximum number of points you’re willing to pay
• The maximum number of fees you’re willing to pay

Hot Tip:

Once set, alerts stay on until you delete them. This is in contrast to Seats.aero, which deletes your alert as soon as it gets a hit.

Super Alerts

In particular, the ability to set an alert for 90 days is a huge deal. It’s especially important for those who are looking to take an aspirational flight rather than people looking for specific dates.

For example, let’s say you want to fly ANA first class, which is notoriously difficult to find. When it releases seats, if it does, they’re snapped up pretty quickly.

An excellent use of the alert feature is to set up 4 90-day search alerts using pretty strict parameters:

In this example, you’ve got your 90-day window, searching from California to Tokyo (Narita and Haneda). The alert will trigger only on nonstop first class flights with at least 1 seat bookable using United MileagePlus miles.

Using the filters in this way leaves exactly 1 scenario in which you get an alert: ANA first class flights.

Note that alerts like this refresh every 1 to 8 hours, depending on how broad the search is. The narrower the search the more often it’s refreshed. This is a pretty narrow search (with the exception of multiple California airports), so odds are it’ll be refreshed quickly enough to snag the ANA first class seat.

Now, all you need to do is set an alert for the next 90-day window using the same parameters, and then the one after that, and the one after that. You’ll have the entirety of the calendar covered for ANA first class, refreshed as often as possible, and it will only take 4 of your alerts.

Bottom Line:

Roame’s alert tool is incredibly powerful and can be used to find flights anywhere in the world.

Email Deals

We wouldn’t normally include getting emails from a company as a benefit, but Roame is an exception. That’s because the company sends out super helpful award alerts to both paid and free members.

While this is something we actually do here at Upgraded Points, it’s a service that many other websites will charge you for.

Pros and Cons of Roame

We’ve gone over all of Roame’s features, including live searches, SkyView, and how to set alerts. But what are the pros and cons of Roame overall?

Pros

• Free To Use: Roame doesn’t lock most of its features behind a paywall.
• Fantastic Alert Capabilities: With repeat alerts and a huge 90-day window for searches, Roame’s alert settings are some of the best around.
• Intuitive: The website is well-designed and easy to use.
• Email Alerts: They’re available to free and paid users.

Cons

• Membership: You must sign up for a membership to complete searches.
• Paywall: The best features are locked behind a paywall.
• Discover Page: It’s nice for inspiration, but the results are too old to be useful.
• No Hotels: Competing websites include hotel searches and alerts.
• Expensive: It’s more costly than the competition.

How Roame Compares to Competitors

Roame is more expensive than the competition, which is surprising because it gives you so many of its features for free.

However, it’s likely that the majority of its cost is for its extremely powerful alert function. No other website gives you the ability to set an alert like this. Point.me, for example, doesn’t even offer the option to have an alert. Seats.aero does, but it deletes your alert after it’s notified you 1 time (and this sucks if the flight you want is on a date you can’t make). AwardTool allows you to have repeated alerts but caps your capability at 32 different variables. The same is true for PointsYeah.

But it’s worth noting that Roame lacks a hotel search function, which Seats.aero, AwardTool, and PointsYeah all include with their memberships. These allow you to find live award availability for hotels, which pairs nicely with airline award searches.

Who Is Roame For?

Roame is a tool for users of every type. Its easy-to-use search bar gives you the results for flights you need even if you’ve never redeemed miles before.

However, it also offers advanced tools that’ll satisfy even the most experienced AvGeek. Want to fly JAL’s new A350, no matter the date? Roame has a filter for that.

It’s more expensive than the competition and lacks the ability to search for hotel awards. That means that if you want to comb through multiple hotel loyalty programs, you’re stuck paying for another membership — or doing it the old-fashioned way.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Roame is an excellent search tool for finding airline award availability. It has 2 standout features: 365-day access to searches for free members and vastly overpowered alerts that you can keep on forever. Both of these things outdo the competition, making Roame a must-have for many points-and-miles enthusiasts.