Redeem your points and miles: How to search flight award availability for the major airlines

Becoming an advanced award traveler requires mastering two skills: earning points and miles and effectively redeeming them.

By taking advantage of the best travel rewards credit cards, you can master the first skill. However, the second can be more challenging.

At TPG, we help you redeem transferable points at the maximum value. However, some travelers frequently run into issues finding award space.

Unfortunately, there isn't a general rule you can follow to make searching for award space easier. Each airline and award search engine has pros, cons and quirks to be aware of. The program you wish to use may not show the flight you want online. You can save yourself time and frustration by potentially searching for availability through a different program (that has a more sophisticated search engine) and then using your points and miles of choice to book.

Here is the best way to find points and miles award availability across major airlines.

Related: How I'm planning my transferable points strategy this year and how you can, too

Search airline award availability with an app or third-party tool

Several apps and websites let you search across multiple airlines, alliances and programs at once, rather than worrying about the best loyalty program to sift through.

Our preferred platform at TPG is Seats.aero, which shows results across 20 major airline loyalty programs, including American Airlines AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus. This powerful tool lets you search all 20 programs simultaneously across multiple routes, dates, classes and transfer partners quickly and easily in seconds. You can also search each program individually over an entire year, showing every seat available to book with points and miles, with handy filters like a maximum number of points to redeem or surcharges to pay.

The platform has also developed several handy tools to help you find those harder-to-book seats, such as Lufthansa first class, Delta One, All Nippon Airways first class and Qatar Airways Qsuite. You can set alerts across multiple routes, dates, programs and carriers to be notified by text or email if a seat you seek becomes available.

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You could also consider ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG's parent company, Red Ventures). Read our beginners guide to award searches on ExpertFlyer to get up to speed. ExpertFlyer allows you to search for award inventory from most major airlines on one interface, though it is not as intuitive or powerful as Seats.aero. You can search for up to seven days at a time and search for multiple cabins (e.g., first and business class) in one search.

Related: These apps and websites make award redemptions easier to find

Search award availability for North American airlines

Here are some of the most convenient partner program suggestions.

A few popular airlines are missing from this list. For example, if you plan on flying Southwest Airlines or Spirit Airlines using points and miles, you must book directly with their loyalty programs, so you don't have to worry about picking a partner airline to search for award availability.

In addition to searching for award space within the airline's own program, you should also compare points and miles prices on partner loyalty programs.

U.S. legacy carriers are among the easiest to deal with, as they all have relatively robust and comprehensive search engines — so you may be able to find the flight you want by searching with the airline you wish to fly with.

These programs lean toward dynamic pricing. One of the (many) downsides of dynamic pricing is that less saver award space is available, making it harder to find a good deal on partner award sites. However, you could save yourself thousands of miles by booking through a partner program like those listed above, that does not price dynamically.

Search award availability for European airlines

European loyalty programs can offer great deals on redemptions, whether you are flying to Europe on, say, business-class flights from just 34,000 credit card points or economy flights to London from just 6,000 points.

Here is how to search for the best award availability:

Search award availability for Asian airlines

Award space to Asia can be harder to come by than on domestic flights or flights to and from Europe, especially in premium cabins. Here are the best options to maximize your chances.

Search award availability for other airlines

Some of the most aspirational first-class airline products, like Etihad's A380 Apartments and Emirates' A380 suites, are offered by airlines outside of North America, Europe and Asia.

Here's how to search for award availability.

General tips when searching for airline award redemptions

Now that you know where to search for award space for your next trip, let's look at a few tricks to make the process easier.

Search segment by segment

This is an odd quirk of most award search engines, but you'll often get different results if you search for your complete itinerary instead of one flight at a time.

If you can find availability per segment, even if the entire journey is not showing up in a single search result, you should be able to call the airline and book this as a single award without too much trouble.

Consider married segments

Sometimes, airlines will offer more seats for indirect itineraries than nonstop ones. Why? Airlines believe passengers will pay more for direct fares with cash (compared to indirect ones), so with less demand for connecting itineraries, they may offer additional seats.

Using this married segment logic on your next search, you may be able to find long-haul, premium-cabin seats you did not think existed. Consider widening your search to connect in another city you wish to fly to using a catch-all external tool like Seats.aero.

You might be surprised at the additional availability if you are willing to fly somewhere a little farther afield than your original destination.

Take notes and come prepared

Many airline customer service agents are good at their jobs, but you'll get much better results when you do the work yourself.

Before you call to book an award flight, you should have the exact dates and flight numbers you want; make that known early in the conversation.

As soon as you tell the agent where you're trying to go, throw in, "I have the flight numbers here whenever you're ready for them," so they don't waste any time trying to search on their end.

If you've done your homework to ensure that there is award space and your routing is valid, these calls will go much easier.

Bottom line

Learning how to find and book award flights is one of the hardest things about award travel — especially when booking premium-cabin seats on a long flight.

An increasing number of third-party apps and websites can save you a lot of time by searching multiple programs and airlines simultaneously for a small monthly membership fee, which can be well worth it to find the perfect long-haul, premium-cabin award seat.

If you have a specific airline you wish to travel on, use the tables above to search for award space and make sure you know the lowest price before transferring any credit card points and booking.

Related reading:

• How to find hotel award availability: Use these tricks during your search
• 10 mistakes to avoid when redeeming airline points and miles
• Best Avios sweet spots: How to redeem for domestic and international award flights
• Quick Points: Use Flying Blue's calendar search tool to find cheaper award tickets
• How to use Google Flights to find cheap flights and maximize your next travel booking