How to Use Seats.aero Like a Pro: 5 Ways to Find Better Award Flights

Finding a flight with cash is relatively easy.

Open Google Flights, enter where you want to go, choose your dates and compare the options.

Finding the same flight with airline miles can be considerably more complicated.

The award you want might appear through one loyalty program but not another. Business Class could be available on Tuesday but completely disappear on Wednesday. The best option from New York might leave JFK instead of Newark, or perhaps the award you want simply isn’t available yet.

That’s where Seats.aero becomes useful.

Seats.aero is an award flight search tool that helps travelers find flights bookable with airline miles across multiple loyalty programs, dates and destinations.

Instead of repeatedly searching individual airline websites, you can use it to identify where award availability exists and then verify and book the flight through the appropriate loyalty program.

But there’s a difference between simply searching Seats.aero and using Seats.aero strategically.

Here are five of the best ways to use it like a pro.

1. Search Broadly Instead of One Airport at a Time

This is probably the biggest change you can make to the way you search for award flights.

Most travelers start with something extremely specific:

• Newark → Rome
• October 10
• Business Class
• Two passengers

There’s nothing wrong with starting there. The problem is concluding that there are “no award flights” when that exact search returns nothing.

Award availability rewards flexibility.

If you’re trying to get from the New York area to Italy, your actual options could include departures from:

• Newark
• JFK
• Philadelphia
• Washington Dulles, if you’re willing to reposition

And arrivals could include:

• Rome
• Milan
• Venice
• Another European gateway with an inexpensive connection onward

Seats.aero allows you to search multiple airports and broader airport groupings, making it much easier to expand the search.

This changes the question from:

Is there a Business Class award from Newark to Rome?

to:

What Business Class awards can get me from the Northeast to Europe around the dates I want to travel?

Those are very different searches.

Know when repositioning is actually worthwhile

Searching broadly doesn’t mean you should book every complicated itinerary you find.

If leaving from Washington instead of Newark saves you 5,000 miles in Economy, the additional positioning probably isn’t worthwhile. But imagine there are no reasonable Business Class awards from New York and you find:

Washington → Paris in Business Class for 70,000 miles

Now repositioning might deserve consideration because the goal isn’t maximum flexibility at all costs…it’s understanding what additional flexibility can buy you.

2. Use Explore When You Know When You Want to Travel, But Not Where

This is one of the more interesting ways to use Seats.aero. Sometimes you know exactly where you’re going. And other times, you just want to go somewhere (unless that’s just us?).

Maybe you have a week off in August and a large balance of transferable points. You’d love to fly Business Class to Europe, but you don’t particularly care whether you end up in:

• Paris.
• Madrid.
• Amsterdam.
• Rome.
• Lisbon.

In that situation, searching every possible route individually makes little sense.

That’s where Seats.aero Explore becomes valuable.

Rather than starting with a specific destination, Explore lets you look at where award availability already exists.

Think about the difference this way:

• Search: Can my miles get me to Paris?
• Explore:Where can my miles take me?

That second question can uncover trips you never would have searched for individually.

Let availability influence the trip

This requires a slightly different mentality toward award travel. With cash tickets, most people:

Choose destination → choose dates → find flight

With miles, particularly when trying to book premium cabins, it can sometimes make sense to reverse the process:

Find availability → evaluate destination → build trip

That doesn’t mean you should let an award search engine decide where you vacation. But if you’d be equally happy spending a week in Madrid or Rome, why not see which destination has substantially better award availability?

Flexibility is one of the most valuable currencies in award travel.

3. Compare Loyalty Programs Before Transferring Your Points

Finding an available seat is only the beginning. This is one of the most important concepts to understand about award travel:

The airline operating your flight doesn’t necessarily have to be the loyalty program you use to book it.

An airline’s flight may potentially be bookable through one or more partner programs, and those programs don’t necessarily charge the same amount.

Imagine finding the Business Class seat you want.

One program might want 110,000 miles + $75, while another might offer access to that flight for 75,000 miles + $150 And another program might not show the award at all.

Seats.aero can make it considerably easier to identify availability across different supported loyalty programs.

In the example below, you can see that flight LH401 has multiple transfer partners through Air Canada, United and ANA. Looking at Air Canada and United specifically, Air Canada has this award route for 60,000 points and $79.20 CAD (~$57 USD), while United is offering the route for 88,000 points and only $5.60.

All this to say that you shouldn’t immediately transfer points to one partner simply because you’ve found a flight. You should take it one step further by comparing:

• Mileage requirements
• Taxes and fees
• Transfer partners
• Transfer times
• Cancellation/change rules
• Number of seats available

Then determine which booking method makes the most sense.

Your points are more flexible before you transfer them

This is particularly important if you’re using transferable credit card points. While they’re sitting in a transferable rewards program, you may have numerous ways to use them.

Once you transfer them into an airline program, you’re generally committing those points to that ecosystem. That’s why we consider Seats.aero primarily a discovery tool in a suite of tools that help you to make the best decision all around. The Fare Theory has a guide on other tools that help you to make the most informed decision finding the best flights.

1. Find the opportunity first.
2. Verify that it actually exists with the loyalty program.
3. Understand the cost.
4. Then transfer points if necessary.

Not the other way around.

4. Use Alerts for the Awards You Can’t Find Today

This may be the most useful Seats.aero feature for a trip you’re planning months in advance.

Because award availability isn’t static. An airline showing zero Business Class award seats today doesn’t necessarily mean there will be zero seats tomorrow.

• Inventory can appear.
• Seats can disappear.
• Pricing can change.
• Additional award space can be released closer to departure.

Instead of repeatedly running the same search, create an alert.

For example, suppose you’re looking for:

New York → Tokyo
October 7–10
Business Class
2 passengers

You search today and find nothing you’re willing to book. Rather than checking every morning, set an alert around the criteria that matter. Seats.aero can monitor availability and notify you when something matching your search appears.

That changes your workflow from:

I wonder if there’s availability today.

to:

Tell me when there’s availability worth looking at.

That’s a much better use of your time.

Be prepared before the alert arrives

There’s one slight catch and here that you should be aware of. The alert you create doesn’t hold the seat for you. This means that if desirable premium-cabin availability appears, other travelers may be trying to book the same inventory.

Before setting an important alert, I would already know:

• Which programs could I use to book this?
• Do I have enough points?
• If not, where would I transfer them from?
• What’s the maximum number of miles I’m willing to spend?
• What alternative airports would I accept?

Then, if the right award appears, you’re evaluating a known opportunity instead of learning an entirely new loyalty program while the seat potentially disappears.

5. Always Compare the Award Against the Cash Price

Finding award availability does not mean you should use your miles. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes travelers make is treating any available award seat as a good redemption.

Seats.aero can help you find the seat. The next question is whether that seat is actually worth booking with points.

Here’s a real example.

I found an Air France Business Class flight from Newark to Paris available through multiple loyalty programs. For the exact same flight, Seats.aero showed:

• Etihad Guest: 80,000 miles + $236.50
• Delta SkyMiles: 252,500 miles + $5.60

Same Air France flight, with the same exact Business Class seat and departure date, however a difference of 172,500 miles depending on which loyalty program you use.

That’s already a reason to compare booking options before transferring or redeeming anything. But there’s another piece of information we still need:

What does the flight actually cost?

That’s why I like using Seats.aero alongside Google Flights.

Use Seats.aero to answer:

What can I book with miles, and through which programs?

Use Google Flights to answer:

What would the alternative cost me in cash?

For this particular flight, the corresponding Air France Business Class ticket was selling for $2,559.

Now we can put the redemptions into context. A simple way to estimate cents per point is:

(Cash price − award taxes and fees) ÷ points required × 100

Using Etihad Guest:

($2,559 − $236.50) ÷ 80,000 × 100 = 2.90 cents per point

Using Delta SkyMiles:

($2,559 − $5.60) ÷ 252,500 × 100 = 1.01 cents per mile

The difference is substantial.

Program	Miles Required	Taxes & Fees	Approx. Value
Etihad Guest	80,000	$236.50	2.90¢/point
Delta SkyMiles	252,500	$5.60	1.01¢/mile

The Etihad redemption requires a little more cash out of pocket, but saves 172,500 miles compared with booking the exact same seat through Delta.

This is one of the reasons I find Seats.aero so useful. You’re not just looking for a flight with award availability. You can compare different ways of booking that flight and then put those options against the actual cash price.

But there’s one more important caveat:

A high cents-per-point value doesn’t automatically make an award worth booking.

The $2,559 cash price gives us a useful benchmark, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you might personally value the flight at $2,559.

Realistically, if you would never spend $2,559 on a one-way Business Class ticket, then saying that you “saved $2,559” by redeeming miles exaggerates the real value that you’d be receiving.

Maybe you would have otherwise bought a $700 Economy ticket. Maybe you’d pay $1,200 for Business Class but not $2,559. Or even perhaps this is an overnight flight before an important trip, and arriving rested genuinely makes the premium cabin worth significantly more to you.

That’s where the math stops and personal value starts.

Seats.aero tells you what’s possible. Google Flights tells you what the market is charging.

Neither can tell you what the experience is worth to you.

That’s ultimately the distinction between finding a redemption that looks good on paper and finding a redemption that’s actually a good use of your miles.

Is Seats.aero Pro Worth It?

You can absolutely get value from Seats.aero without immediately paying for Pro. Our recommendation is to start with the free version and understand how the tool fits into your travel habits.

Pro becomes more interesting if you’re regularly searching for premium-cabin awards, need longer search windows, want more advanced filtering or rely heavily on award alerts.

The important question isn’t:

Does Seats.aero Pro have better features?

Of course it does.

The better question is:

Will I actually use those features enough to justify paying for them?

Someone taking one award trip every couple of years may not need it.

Someone trying to find two Business Class awards to Asia during a specific travel window has a very different problem.

And if a month of Pro helps uncover an award that saves tens of thousands of miles, or several hours of manually searching airline websites, the subscription can be relatively easy to justify.

Always Verify Availability Before Booking

There’s one final rule I’d follow regardless of how you use Seats.aero:

Verify the award directly with the loyalty program before making any irreversible decisions.

Award inventory can change quickly, and search tools don’t actually issue the ticket.

Once you find something interesting:

1. Open the loyalty program through which you intend to book.
2. Search the exact flight and date.
3. Confirm the correct cabin.
4. Confirm the number of seats.
5. Confirm the mileage price.
6. Check the taxes and fees.
7. Only then consider transferring points.

This is particularly important with transferable points.

Don’t move a large balance into an airline program based solely on a search result and assume everything will work afterward.

Find. Verify. Transfer. Book.

In that order.

The Fare Theory

Seats.aero doesn’t magically create better award availability.

It makes existing award availability easier to find.

And that distinction is important. The traveler who searches:

Newark → Rome, October 10

may conclude there are no good options.

The traveler who searches multiple airports, checks nearby dates, explores alternative destinations, compares loyalty programs and creates alerts might uncover an entirely different set of possibilities.

That’s where the real value of Seats.aero comes from, not necessarily searching harder but by searching smarter. And once you find that perfect Business Class award, there’s still one final question to answer:

Is this actually a good use of my miles?

Because finding an award and finding a valuable award aren’t necessarily the same thing.