Seats.aero: How This Fun, Geeky, Useful, Award Search Tool Works

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 there’s also merit to writing dedicated posts about them sometimes.

In this post, I’d like 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. It’s a service that I use and pay for. In separate posts, I’ve talked about Google Flights, AwardWallet, ExpertFlyer, point.me, MaxMyPoint, aeroLOPA, and more.

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 lets you create free alerts to find award flights. Seats.aero supports roughly two dozen 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 a Seats.aero membership 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 to find award flights?

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, and you may sometimes find phantom availability. 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 dozens of frequent flyer programs

Seats.aero currently searches award space through roughly a couple of dozen frequent flyer programs, most of which partner with major transferable points currencies. These programs include the following:

• Aeromexico Rewards
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France-KLM Flying Blue
• Alaska Atmos Rewards
• American AAdvantage
• Avianca Lifemiles
• Copa ConnectMiles
• Delta SkyMiles
• Emirates Skywards
• Etihad Guest
• Finnair Plus
• GOL Smiles
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Lufthansa Miles & More
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Qatar Airways Privilege Club
• SAS EuroBonus
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
• 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. What’s cool is that these searches don’t just work for routes operated directly by the airline affiliated with the frequent flyer program, but also for routes operated by partner airlines.

For example, say you select Finnair Plus as the program. You’ll see a list of all routes that Seats.aero has award availability for with Finnair Plus (again, let me emphasize that this also applies to partner airline availability).

You can further customize this by just typing an airport code or two into the search bar at the top right. For example, I entered “HEL” and “DFW,” so that I could see availability between Helsinki and Dallas, a route the airline operates. 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 “Business” column, I could see all the dates with business class availability through the end of the schedule.

As an example of the versatility of this search tool, let’s say you wanted to search Vietnam Airlines award availability between Frankfurt and Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam Airlines is in the SkyTeam alliance, and Delta SkyMiles is one of the programs available through Seats.aero.

You could just enter “FRA” and “SGN,” and then click “Find availability” for the direction of travel you prefer.

You’ll then see a display with all of the dates available, and you can sort by class, etc.

Just to be clear, these same seats should also be available through other partner programs. So the idea is that you could redeem miles with Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Delta SkyMiles, etc.

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 an All Nippon Airways first class finder, Japan Airlines first class finder, Lufthansa first class finder, Qatar Airways business class finder, etc.

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 bar, where you can type in an airport code, if you want to narrow down results to a single airport. For example, you could type in “JFK” if you only want results involving that airport. In fairness, given the limited award availability for Lufthansa first class, too much filtering isn’t typically needed. 😉

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. Note that you’ll actually want to click on the flight options to make sure what’s available is the route you want, as sometimes this includes availability with connections (though pro users can filter to only see direct flights).

Seats.aero award availability 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.

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 a large number of 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. What’s great is the amount of availability you can look at very quickly, though the catch is that this isn’t quite real time, so you’ll want to verify that availability is accurate.

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?