The Best Websites for Doing Award Searches
Using Your Points for Free Travel, 1. Search for Frequent Flyer Award Availability Like a Pro
Our general advice and tips for finding award space are available in our complete guide.
Our award searching guide summarizes the airline websites to use. But it can also be helpful to have a deeper understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the different sites.
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Airline websites
For international flights, you should search on the best websites for finding award space on each alliance.
- United Airline’s website provides the best experience for searching Star Alliance availability. It has a nice user interface, doesn’t require you to have an account, and allows you to view two months of information at a time. Unfortunately, it isn’t always completely accurate—it may not show all the available award space and it may show award availability that doesn’t really exist. If you are having difficulty finding what you are need or if you want to see what partner award space is available on United itself, make sure to try Air Canada’s site as well.
- Air Canada’s Aeroplan website isn’t quite as convenient to search as United and sometimes has a harder time finding connections. But it has the advantage of searching every one of the Star Alliance airlines and will often uncover additional options that require extra connections.
- Only Singapore's own site (and sometimes Alaska Airline's) will find business and first-class space on Singapore Airlines. And you'll usually need to book those flights with Singapore miles anyways.
It also doesn’t always find available award space on Singapore, Shenzhen, and Swiss. So if you might want to utilize these airlines, make sure to use Air Canada's site.
You almost always want to search both Delta and Air France / KLM for SkyTeam flights. Both programs have dynamic pricing. You need to search on the airline's own program to find non-saver ticketss that cost slightly more than the minimum number of points (and can't be booked with partner miles). And you'll need to search on another airline's website to see what is actually available for partner awards.
- Delta’s website is a good option for searching for SkyTeam availability. If you will be using Delta miles, it conveniently searches many of Delta’s non-alliance partners (like Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Australia). However, Delta doesn’t search for availability on a few of the smaller SkyTeam airlines, so you might miss available space on Kenya Airways, Czech Airlines, Aeroflot, and Air Europa. For these airlines, make sure to search Air France as well. Also beware that sometimes the Delta won't list partner non-stop award options unless you explicitly filter the awards to show only non-stop flights.
- Air France is the most comprehensive option for searching for SkyTeam award availability. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always do a good job of searching for connecting flights and because of their dynamic pricing scheme, it is difficult to tell when regular ("saver-level") space is available—which is the space you can book through other programs.
- American Airlines is the best place to get started for Oneworld flights. Their site is relatively easy to use, doesn't require you to sign in, and covers every Oneworld airline.
- In most cases, the next best site to check is Qantas. Their site is fairly accurate, but excludes Japan and Malaysian Airlines. While you can start searching without being signed in, you will wind up needing to sign in with a Qantas Frequent flyer account before you can see any results. Qantas is also a good site for searching Emirates.
- British Airways covers all the Oneworld airlines, but isn't as accurate or as good at finding connecting flights. Try to concentrate on searching for individual segments. You will need to be signed in with a British Airways frequent flyer account.
- Cathay Pacific availability on other websites is not always comprehensive. If you want to make sure you are seeing all the Cathay Pacific availability, you should check the Japan Airlines website. You will need to be signed in with a JAL Mileage Bank account.
Also...
- If you have Alaska miles, make sure to check the well-designed Alaska website. They have some unique partners and some unique limitations, such as only supporting each partner for certain regions. The best way to be sure you can book tickets with your Alaska miles is simply to use their site. However, Cathay Pacific and LAN are both important partners of Alaska Airlines and aren't fully supported on the Alaska website. You’ll need to use a Oneworld search site to check for availability instead, and then call in to Alaska to double-check.
