Welcome to AwardFares! Traveling on a lie-flat business class seat, champagne in hand, on your way to a dream destination is much closer than you think – all booked using points and miles. AwardFares is your expert co-pilot, designed to make finding and booking those valuable award flights easier and more efficient than ever before.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the world of points and miles or looking to maximize your existing balances; this guide is your launchpad. We’ll walk you through the essentials of AwardFares, transforming you into a pro award travel hacker in no time.

Key Takeaways

  • Find Flights in Real-Time: Search for award seat availability across multiple loyalty programs at once, with live data for subscribers.
  • Set & Forget with Alerts: Let AwardFares automatically monitor routes for you and get notified as soon as award seats open up.
  • Plan Complex Trips: Use the Journey Planner to build multi-city itineraries and find connecting flights with ease.
  • Pick the Best Seat: View live seat maps for many airlines before you even book your flight.
  • Start for Free: Explore cached results and see what’s possible with our Free plan, then upgrade for more power.

In This Guide

What Is Award Travel?

Before we explore AwardFares, let’s briefly touch upon award travel. Simply put, it’s the art of using points or miles, earned through loyalty programs (from airlines, credit cards, hotels, etc.), to book flights instead of paying with cash.

Why is it so popular?

  • Fly Premium for Less: Experience Business or First Class cabins that might otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
  • Save on Economy: Use points to cover economy flights, freeing up cash for other travel expenses.
  • Unlock Flexibility: Some award tickets offer more generous change or cancellation policies.

AwardFares helps you navigate the complexities of finding which flights have seats available for booking with points, often in real-time.

Getting Started with AwardFares

Embarking on your award travel journey with AwardFares is simple.

  1. Sign Up: If you haven’t already, create your AwardFares account. Our Free plan is a great way to start exploring. You can see award availability on routes recently found by other users, giving you a taste of what’s possible.
  2. The Search Dashboard: Once logged in, you’ll find yourself at the heart of AwardFares. From here, you can easily access all our powerful tools.
AwardFares Award Search main dashboard

Core Feature 1: The Award Search Dashboard

This is where the magic happens! AwardFares’ powerful search interface helps you find specific award availability across multiple loyalty programs on any route and any date.

How Real-Time Search Works

For Gold and Diamond members, most searches provide true real-time award availability. Diamond users can refresh availability as often as every minute, while Gold users can refresh once per hour. This is crucial for snagging newly released seats!

Step 1: Select Programs and Route

  1. Loyalty Program(s): Choose the frequent flyer program(s) you have points with.
  2. Origin & Destination: Type in your departure and arrival points. You can use airport codes (e.g., JFK), city names (e.g., London), countries (e.g., Japan), or even continents (e.g., Europe to Asia) for broad searches.
  3. Multiple Airports: Search with up to 6 airports or city areas at once (e.g., 1 origin + 5 destinations, subject to plan limits).

Pro Tip

Gold/Diamond Users: You can select multiple programs at once to compare availability and pricing side-by-side. Even if a program isn’t officially supported, searching an alliance partner (e.g., searching AAdvantage for a oneworld partner flight) can still show you if seats are available.

Step 2: Choose Your Dates

  • Specific Date: Triggers a live, up-to-the-minute search for subscribed users.
  • Timeline View: Use the Timeline to visualize availability across a range of dates. Simply click the Search icon (🔎) for each date you want to query live data.
  • Flexible Dates: Searching without a date shows you recently found availability, perfect for exploration.
AwardFares Award Search interface showing route, multi-program, and date selection

Step 3: Analyze the Results

  • Flight List: Shows flights matching your criteria.
  • Availability & Pricing: See available cabin classes, the number of award seats, and points required. You can sort and filter by price to find the cheapest redemptions.
  • Mixed Cabins: We clearly show which segments are in a lower cabin and the flight time for each.
AwardFares search results showing flight availability, pricing, and mixed cabin details

Step 4: Dive Deeper and Filter

Click the arrow icon next to a flight to see:

  • Key Information: Aircraft type, duration, layovers.
  • Prices & Taxes: Redemption prices and taxes (where available), plus a booking link to go directly to the airline’s site.
  • Live Seat Maps (Gold/Diamond): View the actual seat map.
  • Track This Flight: Quickly set up an Alert directly from the result.

Don’t forget to use the Advanced Filters (unlocked with Gold/Diamond) to narrow your search by number of stops, specific airlines, cabin types (including an “All First Class” filter), max price, and more!

Using advanced filters to search for the best award flights

Core Feature 2: Automated Award Alerts

Found your ideal route but no seats yet? AwardFares availability alerts are your 24/7 automated search assistant. Alerts will automatically search the route for you and notify you by email and push notifications as soon as availability that matches your criteria appears.

How to Create an Alert (Gold/Diamond):

  1. From Search Results: The easiest way! When you search a route and date, just click the “Track” button.
  2. From the Alerts Page: Manually configure your alert with advanced options:
    • Set route, dates, and desired cabins.
    • Use a Wide Search to check +/- days around your target date.
    • Filter by number of passengers, airlines, stops, and even max price.
Setting up an advanced Award Alert in AwardFares with filters

Core Feature 3: The Journey Planner

Planning a multi-city trip or a complex routing? The Journey Planner is an essential tool to organize flights and map out your entire itinerary.

  • Build Your Itinerary: Add multiple flights to construct your desired trip.
  • Find Connections: Automatically search for valid connecting flights (up to a 24-hour layover) to bridge gaps in your journey.
  • Share Your Plan: Easily share your journey with friends or copy it as text for your notes.
  • Book Trips: For some programs, you can initiate a booking for the entire journey directly from the planner.
Planning a complex itinerary of award flights with the Journey Planner

Core Feature 4: Live Seat Maps

Knowing if a seat is available is one thing; knowing which seat is another. AwardFares integrates Live Seat Maps for many flights, showing you available, blocked, and occupied seats in real-time. This lets you check for desirable seats (e.g., window, aisle, or seats together) before committing your points.

Important Note on Seat Maps

Seat map data is provided by airlines and its availability is not guaranteed. It can sometimes become unavailable closer to departure (from hours to days before the flight), depending on the airline’s policy.

Example of a live seat map in AwardFares

Understanding AwardFares Plans

AwardFares offers three tiers to fit different needs.

  • Free: Explore with the Award Calendar and see cached (recently found) Award Search results. A great way to start.
  • Gold: The go-to for serious award travelers. Unlocks real-time searches, Alerts, advanced filters, live Seat Maps, multi-program search, and the Journey Planner.
  • Diamond: For the ultimate power user. All Gold benefits plus higher search/refresh rates (up to every minute), more alerts, and increased limits.

Visit our Pricing Page for a full comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your Questions Answered

What is the main purpose of AwardFares?

AwardFares is a search engine for airline award travel. It helps you quickly find which flights have seats available for booking with points and miles across many different frequent flyer programs, saving you from searching each airline’s website one by one.

How does the 'real-time' search work?

For our Gold and Diamond subscribers, when you perform a search for a specific route and date, AwardFares connects directly to the airline’s systems to fetch the most current award availability information, often within seconds. This is critical for finding and booking high-demand seats.

How do I book a flight I find on AwardFares?

AwardFares is a search tool, not a booking agent. Once you find a flight, we provide a deep link that takes you directly to the flight on the airline’s loyalty program website. From there, you can log in to your frequent flyer account and complete the booking using your points.

What's the difference between an Award Search and an Alert?

An Award Search is an action you perform manually to see availability right now. An Alert is an automated search that you set up once. The alert runs in the background and notifies you only when seats matching your criteria become available, saving you the effort of checking every day.

Is AwardFares free to use?

Yes! We have a Free plan that allows you to see cached search results and explore what’s possible. To access powerful features like real-time searches, alerts, and advanced filters, you’ll need a Gold or Diamond subscription.

Read More

Now that you’ve mastered the basics, dive deeper with our expert guides.

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