When it comes to locating award seat availability, there is the easy way and the hard way. The hard way, which is what one has to follow half the time, is to manually locate reward seat availability. But some tools make the other half easy for some popular programmes. One of them is Seats.Aero, which is an award search engine on the rise.

What is Seats.Aero?

Seats.Aero is an award search engine that helps find award availability on flights and hotels (using its sister website, Rooms.Aero). The tool has a different approach to looking for reward seats. Instead of looking for “fresh” data every time someone looks for it, the tool looks for award space on a large number of routes and loyalty programmes and caches it. That means results are available to instantly search, sort and filter.

Free v/s Pro

There is a free version of Seats.aero, which will provide you with award space within the next two months and does not require a login. The results are available in a format that is quick to search and filter, making it convenient to find close-in award availability. For instance, through the free version, you can search for direct flights (and their availability) on a certain set of flexible dates later in the year (up to two months).

The Pro version allows for search results much farther into the future and all sorts of alerts. If you like to sign up for the Pro version, it costs USD 9.99 per month or USD 99.99 per annum. However, using the code LIVEFROMALOUNGE, you can get a 30% discount for the first month or first year of subscription for a limited time.

The pro version gives you uncapped availability alerts throughout the year and sends you SMS alerts as well. You can also join the Seats.Aero discord community, where alerts appear when award availability jumps. You can also add a request to track a previously untracked route.

Mileage Programmes on board

Seats.Aero supports sixteen loyalty programmes for now. Search results don’t just include flights flown by the loyalty programme’s own airline but also the partner flights that can be booked with that programme. Here are the programmes that Seats.Aero can track for now:

• Aeromexico Club Premier
• Air Canada Aeroplan: Air Canada Aeroplan has access to Star Alliance Awards and other Air Canada partners such as Emirates.
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue: Flying Blue is great for finding redemption flights on Air France and KLM and for finding availability on other SkyTeam partners. It also offers access to Virgin Atlantic, which costs more in points but less in surcharges.
• Alaska Mileage Plan: Mileage Plan is a good programme for finding oneworld availability and Singapore Airlines.
• American Airlines: Useful for finding oneworld awards
• Azul TudoAzul
• Delta SkyMiles: Useful to find award availability on SkyTeam Alliance, apart from Delta itself.
• Emirates Skywards: Useful for finding Emirates awards, all the way up to First Class
• Etihad Guest: Useful for finding Etihad awards and partners KLM/ Air France.
• GOL Smiles
• JetBlue TrueBlue: Useful to find JetBlue awards, but also Qatar Airways award availability
• Qantas Frequent Flyer: Useful to find Qantas award availability, oneworld as well as partners such as Emirates, El Al and others.
• SAS EuroBonus: Useful to find Star Alliance award availability
• United MileagePlus: Useful for finding Star Alliance award space and other UA partners.
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club: Useful for finding Virgin Atlantic award availability and other SkyTeam saver awards
• Virgin Australia Velocity

For instance, here is some availability for non-stop flights from India (DEL/BOM/BLR) to Europe for the next few days (a feature only for Pro clients) using the Flying Blue programme.

And here is some non-stop availability from the US to India using United MileagePlus on United.

Other product features

If you only want to search a specific route, you can start with the Routes tab in Seats.Aero.  For example, let’s assume you only want to fly from Mumbai to London on Virgin Atlantic.

Here is some availability.

The free version of the Search function is valuable when you’re not looking for a specific carrier but are willing to look on the basis of a route. From there, you can add filters as and when needed. For example, I look up Delhi to Dubai (direct) award space across cabins.

With the Pro version, for example, you can limit your search to show results with a minimum number of seats, select a specific carrier to see results only for that one, and add a cabin or aircraft filter as well.

Aspirational Products

With all the filters built in, some of the more aspirational products can also be separately filtered. For instance, if you want Qatar Airways QSuites only, you can head to thehe Lufthansa First Class finder and the JAL First Class finder QSuites Finder. Then there is t.

Set Alerts on Pro

On Seats.Aero, you can set alerts for specific airports and for specific cabins on specific dates as well.

For instance, this is just me creating an alert for an open seat from Bengaluru to London Heathrow later in the year on a specific date. I have time to buy right now, so I can wait for availability to be opened up. When something I need turns up, the alert will fire up an SMS or Email (depending on my choice), and then delete the alert.

Limitations

While the site is a fantastic take on looking for award space, it comes with some limitations. To keep system resources reasonable, the site pulls in data periodically rather than on every query (as I listed above). That means, sometimes, by the time you act on the information you see, it might have changed. Secondly, it works on a route basis, which means that not every airport or route may be covered. So I am unable to find availability between Delhi and Tahiti for instance (a completely unreasonable ask, I know).

Signing up for Seats.Aero Pro (which also comes with Rooms.Aero Pro included complimentary) will cost you just USD 6.99 (INR 583) for the first month or USD 69.99 (INR 5800) for the first year when you sign up here and apply coupon code LIVEFROMALOUNGE. 

What has been your experience with Seats.Aero, and how have you been using it?

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