Finding award space

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Using frequent flyer miles can be tough. Airlines don't provide much award space, especially on popular routes. And even when award space is available, it can often be difficult to find.

Unfortunately, there is no magical tool that lets you easily search for award availability across every possible airline. A service called Juicy Miles does a decent job, but costs money to use and doesn't check all your options. Otherwise, you can are going to have to search several different websites.

And for some airlines, you’ll have no alternative other than calling in and talking to a phone representative.

Jump to

• Juicy Miles
• Manually searching different websites
• Award search tips
• Searching for space on additional airlines
• If you are having trouble finding availability

Juicy Miles

The easiest way to search for award tickets is to pay to use Juicy Miles.

Juicy Miles is a premium tool that makes it easier to find award space.

Unlike the normal method of finding award space, Juicy Miles allows you to avoid searching across multiple airline websites. You just enter your origin and destination and it searches almost all the major airlines—kind of like an Expedia for award tickets.

Unfortunately, it doesn't search all the options or find every possible award seat. But it does a "good enough" job that many people will choose not to bother with a more time-consuming approach.

• Juicy Miles costs money to use. An ongoing membership is $30 per month! However, you can pay $10 to use the service for 5 days. If you are able to find award space and book right away, it can be affordable to sign up for $10 each time you are planning a trip. But if you need to periodically check to see if award inventory has recently become available, the ongoing membership rate is pretty expensive.
• Behind the scenes, Juicy Miles is searching a set of airline websites and only finding "most" of the available options. There is no "central reservation system" for award flights, like there is for regular airfares. Juicy Miles only sees the award availability on the sites it is searching—the same availability you would see if you manually searched them yourself. Since it doesn't search every airline's website, it doesn't find all the available award space.

Unfortunately, Juicy Miles doesn't publish what websites it is actually searching. As a result, it is hard to know which flights it might be missing. People who aren't okay with Juicy Miles's "good enough" approach will likely decide to not use it all, because it is hard to tell what steps to take to augment its results. At the very least, their FAQ suggests that you'll need to look for Cathay Pacific flights elsewhere and that they miss many American Airlines flight segments.

• Juicy Miles only displays one day and one cabin class at a time. You can ask it to search a multi-day span, but the results for each day are always displayed individually and you can't even be certain when it has finished searching each date. You'll need to individually click on each date to check your options. And unlike many airline websites, it won't show available space across economy, premium economy, business, and first class tickets.
• If you are putting together a segment-by-segment routing, you can filter the results to just non-stop flights by clicking the "Refine" button.

• Not only does Juicy Miles make it easier to find award availability, it also shows you how many points it what take to book the flight with all the popular rewards programs. It even accounts for current transfer bonuses when calculating the required number of points from each different transferable point currency. And it often, but not always, does a decent job of estimating fees and surcharges.

• While it looks nice, some aspects of the user experience can be difficult to use. For example, since the results are always organized by the rewards program being used, there is no simple way to see all the available flights for each date.

Our workaround takes advantage of the Marriott program. Because the Marriott program has so many partners, you can usually select it to see every flight that Juicy Miles uncovered, even if you don't intend to use Marriott points to book your ticket. To be sure, you can compare the number of flights listed under the Marriott program to the number of overall flights found to see if it includes all the available options. If it doesn't, you'll need to check each program and scan through the often duplicative listings to uncover any additional flight options.

Similarly, if you see a flight you want to take, there is no way to easily see how you can book it for the lowest cost. You need to click through each of the program options to see which one is cheapest. Experienced users can guess which programs would be likely candidates for any given flight, but it would just be easier if Juicy Miles provided a list of award options for each flight, rather than a list of flight options for each award program.

Other Tools that Search Multiple Sites

• Award Flights is a free tool that is designed to make it easier to find award availability. You enter your information into the Award Flights tools and it simultaneously searches across several of the best airline websites, displaying the results on a single webpage. It will even search a range of dates (up to 30) and/or multiple origin and departure cities as part of a single search.

If it worked reliably, it would be very convenient. But it doesn't. Pretty much every time we've tried to use it, it wasn't able to return results from at least one of the websites.

• Award Nexus is a similar, more established, more stable, and slightly more polished tool, which searches most of the main websites. But it costs money to use and charges based on the number of websites and dates you search. If you are willing to spend money, Juicy Miles is typically the better choice. Easier Award Search Using Premium Award Searching Tools.

Manually searching different websites

Unlike with regular airfares, there is no behind-the-scenes system where airlines post their award availability. Other than tools like Juicy Miles, airline websites are the only the way to check awards space and each airline's website only searches for awards on some of their partner airlines.

As a result, you'll need to use multiple websites to search all your available options. And even doing that is more complicated than we wish it would be.

At a minimum, you'll need to separately search each alliance (and often some important non-alliance airlines). The good news is that several airline websites search every airline in their alliance. So you can theoretically search one website for each alliance and find every Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and Oneworld award option. However, since each website can miss some available award space, even on the airlines they check, it is better to search two sites for each alliance (if you are willing to spend the extra time).

• If you are flying domestically, you should search directly on the website of each US airline that flies where you want to go. Each of the US Airlines has a good website (especially for their own flights). More importantly, the US Airlines have been aggressively eliminating true "saver" space, but in some cases, non-saver tickets are available for only a small number of extra miles. If you search through a partner's website, you won't see these extra-cost options, even though you might be willing to spend a few more points to book them. In addition, United credit cardholders and elites have access to extra "saver" award space which will only show up on their own website.

You can easily check Alaska’s, American’s, Delta’s, and United’s website, and any other airline for which you have points (such as Frontier).

• But if you are going to use a partner program's points to book the award, you may need to search elsewhere. On American and Alaska airlines, things are relatively straightforward. If tickets are available for the standard price, they should be available through their partners. With United and Delta that isn't the case. Both programs have dynamic pricing that obfuscates whether any given flight is available through partners. For example, if you are planning on using Virgin Atlantic miles to book your Delta flight and you search Delta's website for award availability, it can be hard to tell which flights are actually available to book with your Virgin miles.

For United partner availability, check Air Canada’s Aeroplan. For Delta partner availability, check Virgin Atlantic because they often require far fewer points (or Air France / KLM's Flying Blue).

• If you know you want to fly on Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, KLM, United Airlines, or Virgin Atlantic, give Seat Spy a try. This awesome tool will quickly show you availability for an entire year at a time in every class of service, but only for a single direct route on one of a few airlines.

• For international flights, you should search on the best websites for finding award space on each alliance.

• United Airline’s website provides the best experience for searching Star Alliance availability. It has a nice user interface, doesn’t require you to have an account, and allows you to view two months of information at a time.  Unfortunately, it isn’t always completely accurate—it may not show all the available award space and it may show award availability that doesn’t really exist. If you are having difficulty finding what you are need or if you want to see what partner award space is available on United itself, make sure to try Air Canada’s site as well.

It also doesn’t always find available award space on Singapore, Shenzhen, and Swiss. So if you might want to utilize these airlines, make sure to use Air Canada's site.


• Air Canada’s Aeroplan website isn’t quite as convenient to search as United and sometimes has a harder time finding connections. But it has the advantage of searching every one of the Star Alliance airlines.
• Only Singapore's own site (and sometimes Alaska Airline's) will find business and first-class space on Singapore Airlines. And you'll usually need to book those flights with Singapore miles anyways.

You almost always want to search both Delta and Air France / KLM for SkyTeam flights. Both programs have dynamic pricing. You need to search on the airline's own program to find non-saver ticketss that cost slightly more than the minimum number of points (and can't be booked with partner miles). And you'll need to search on another airline's website to see what is actually available for partner awards.

• Delta’s website is a good option for searching for SkyTeam availability. If you will be using Delta miles, it conveniently searches many of Delta’s non-alliance partners (like Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Australia). However, Delta doesn’t search for availability on a few of the smaller SkyTeam airlines, so you might miss available space on Kenya Airways, Czech Airlines, Aeroflot, and Air Europa. For these airlines, make sure to search Air France as well. Also beware that sometimes the Delta won't list partner non-stop award options unless you explicitly filter the awards to show only non-stop flights.

• Air France is the most comprehensive option for searching for SkyTeam award availability.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t always do a good job of searching for connecting flights and because of their dynamic pricing scheme, it is difficult to tell when regular ("saver-level") space is available—which is the space you can book through other programs.

• American Airlines is the best place to get started for Oneworld flights. Their site is relatively easy to use, doesn't require you to sign in, and covers every Oneworld airline.
• In most cases, the next best site to check is Qantas. Their site is fairly accurate, but excludes Japan and Malaysian Airlines. While you can start searching without being signed in, you will wind up needing to sign in with a Qantas Frequent flyer account before you can see any results. Qantas is also a good site for searching Emirates.

• British Airways covers all the Oneworld airlines, but isn't as accurate or as good at finding connecting flights. Try to concentrate on searching for individual segments. You will need to be signed in with a British Airways frequent flyer account.
• Cathay Pacific availability on other websites is not always comprehensive. If you want to make sure you are seeing all the Cathay Pacific availability, you should check the Japan Airlines website.  You will need to be signed in with a JAL Mileage Bank account.

Also...

• If you have Alaska miles, make sure to check the well-designed Alaska website. They have some unique partners and some unique limitations, such as only supporting each partner for certain regions. The best way to be sure you can book tickets with your Alaska miles is simply to use their site. However, Cathay Pacific and LAN are both important partners of Alaska Airlines and aren't fully supported on the Alaska website. You’ll need to use a Oneworld search site to check for availability instead, and then call in to Alaska to double-check.

Take the time now, to sign up for the key programs. Many airline websites only allow their frequent flyer members to search for award tickets. You should register for accounts at Air France, British Airways, and Qantas, so that you are ready to search for awards. If you put off signing up, there will be one extra obstacle to conducting a more comprehensive search when it is time to look for award space. You can wait to sign up for other programs until you need them.

And use AwardWallet to easily manage each of your accounts. If you follow our advice, you'll wind up with frequent flyer accounts for a bunch of different programs—the programs you choose to earn miles with, the programs you need to belong to in order to search for award space, and the programs you need to transfer your credit card points to in order to book tickets. Fortunately AwardWallet provides a simple, free, and powerful tool for keeping track of all your loyalty account information, so you don't have to. Use AwardWallet to Easily Manage Your Loyalty Program Information.

Award search tips

• When possible, search one direction at a time. Most frequent flyer programs allow for one-way awards. As with regular airfare searches, searching for one direction at a time makes it much simpler to track the various flight options to and from your destination. You might also find space there with one program and space back with another. Unfortunately, some websites will require you to do a round-trip search.
• As with searching for regular airfares, make sure to try alternate dates and airports. The more flexibility you have with your travel dates, the easier it is to find award space. Maybe you can leave or return a day or two earlier or later or travel one of several different weeks.
• If you are willing to invest some extra effort, it is a good idea to search multiple sites for each alliance. Each site may uncover some options that another site doesn’t.
• You can’t entirely trust the award search calendar—search for each date individually. Some websites have calendars that show whether award space is available on other days of the week or month. These seem convenient, but they just aren’t that reliable. Some site’s calendars only show availability on the airline’s own flights. Even when the calendar would show partner availability as well, they don’t always show award availability on all the days where award tickets are really available. And when they do show availability, it may be for some horrible routing. Calendars can give you a rough idea of what to expect in terms of availability, but you really need to check each date one at a time.

• If you are planning on using miles from a partner program, be careful about award space you see on the website's own flights. If a website shows availability on a partner airline, you should be able to book it using any other partner’s frequent flyer miles. However, if it shows availability for its OWN flights, these may not be bookable elsewhere. For example, if you are searching on United Airlines and you see availability on Lufthansa, you should be fine, but if you see availability on United itself, you may not.

Only the flights at the regular (saver) level are ever available at partners and not always then. Sometimes airlines make additional award space available to their own members or only allow their own members to book first class tickets. Whenever you see availability on the airline’s own flights and you are planning to book your tickets with another program, you need to use another website to double-check that the award space will really be available.

• Be careful about award space you see on non-alliance partners. Each of these websites searches a few additional partner airlines, not just the airlines that are part of the alliance. Award space on non-alliance partners may not be able to be booked with miles from another program. For example, if you are searching on Qantas, you may uncover availability on Jetstar that you could book with Qantas miles, but wouldn’t be able to book with most other Oneworld programs.

• If you have elite status (or the airline’s credit card), make sure to sign-in before searching for awards. You might have access to additional award space that the general public does not. Remember that this extra space is only available if you are going to be booking with the airline’s own frequent flyer miles.
• Flights become available for booking at different times with different programs. One program may let you book award tickets 365 days ahead of time and another program may only let you book 330 days ahead of time. However, the underlying airline may not make their award space available as early as a program will let you book them. If you are booking a year ahead of time, you’ll want to search with a program that offers earlier booking of award tickets.

Searching for space on additional airlines

Searching the key airline websites (listed above) WON’T search all the airlines that you can book with your points. They only search the airlines that are part of the big alliances plus a set of additional partner airlines—a total of 60-80 airlines depending on how many sites you use.

Because you can transfer your credit card points to a large number of different frequent flyer programs and each of those programs has a large number of airline partners, there are dozens of additional non-alliance partners which you may be able to use. And many of these aren't being searched by our recommended frequent flyer program websites.

If you want to search unaffiliated airlines that fly where you want to go, you'll need to mostly search them one-by-one.

1. Find all the airlines that fly where you want to go. There is no sense in searching every single airline that you can book with your points. The first step is to figure out which airlines offer flights to where you want to go. You can use several different tools described in our guide to Find All the Flight Options to Your Destination.

2. Cross off any alliance airlines and any unaffiliated airlines that you already searched with the key websites above. If you've started with the major sites, you don't need to search any airlines that belong to the three big alliances. If you already used the listed website, you don’t need to individually check the partner airlines listed below.
• United Airlines. Aer Lingus, Aeromar, Air Dolomiti, Cape Air, Edelweiss, Germanwings, Hawaiian Intra-Island, Silver Airways.
• American Airlines. Air Tahiti Nui, Cape Air, Fiji Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Seaborne Virgin Islands.
• Qantas. Air Vanuatu, El-Al, Emirates, Fiji, Jetstar.
• British Airways. AerLingus.
• Delta. China Southern, Hawaiian, Mandarin, Shanghai, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, WestJet.
• Air France. Transavia.
3. Narrow down the list to just those airlines you can book with your points. Check our List of Which Miles Work for Which Airlines to see which of these airlines can be booked with the types of miles and points that you have.
4. Search each remaining airline for availability. Unfortunately, you usually need to search them one-by-one.
• The most convenient way to search some of these additional airlines is to use ExpertFlyer. It provides a consistent experience for searching for award tickets on many different airlines. Because it only searches one airline at a time, we prefer to start our searches with the key websites discussed above. But when you need to search any remaining individual airlines, it is easier to use ExpertFlyer than it is to use the airline’s own website. The main drawback is that you’ll need to pay to use the service. However, you can always just temporarily subscribe when you need to plan a trip that is hard to book. Easier Award Search Using Premium Award Searching Tools.

• You can usually search for availability on the airline’s own website. Most airlines let you search for availability for their own flights, even if they don’t do a good job of searching partner airlines. If you aren’t willing to pay for an ExpertFlyer subscription or you need to search an airline that ExpertFlyer doesn’t support, your best bet is usually to go directly to the airline’s website and look for an award search feature.

Remember, go to the website of the airline you want to fly, not the website of the frequent flyer program you want to use. Be careful that you only look for regularly priced (saver) awards.

• If you don’t see an award searching option on the home page, make sure to check the frequent flyer section of the website. Sometimes, you need to go to the part of the site about “using miles” to find the award booking functionality. In most cases, you will also need to join the frequent flyer program before you can search—even though you are eventually going to book with another airline’s program.
• Sometimes, you just need to get on the phone and talk to someone. Theoretically, you can call the airline directly or call any of their partners. We prefer utilizing a partner based in an English-speaking country (if possible) and ideally one where we already have an account.

If you are having trouble finding availability

You may not find any award availability on the dates you want to travel. Or you may only find availability for flights which are too inconvenient to be interesting.

• Make sure you are checking all your options. Don’t forget to search alternative airports, alternative dates, and alternative airlines.
• Look for availability for your long-haul flight and work from there. Award searching sites will check for space on many different combinations of flights to your destination. But they never search all your options. If you are having trouble finding space, you can try to construct your own itinerary by combining available award space on individual flight segments. Perhaps you can find award space that travels through a more out-of-the-way connecting point, which has a longer-than-normal connection time, or that makes an additional stop. Search Segment-by-Segment to Find Hidden Award Space.

When you are flying internationally, first try to find availability for your transcontinental flight. For example, if you can't find availability from your home airport to Paris, try searching for flights from New York and DC, or even from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Toronto, and Miami (or if you live on the West Coast: LA, San Francisco, and Vancouver). Then separately try to find award space to that city on a partner airline. You might find a combination that the search tool missed.



Alternatively, try checking for direct flights to some other major city in Europe, like London, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt, and then figure out a way to get from there to Paris.

• Break your trip into multiple reservations. There may simply be no award space between your home city and your destination. This has become more common as US-based airlines have gotten stingier with domestic award availability, especially for the non-stop flights that are useful for connecting to your international leg. However, it may be possible to book an award ticket for the main part of your trip, such as from a US gateway city to Europe and then purchase an inexpensive additional ticket (or book a separate award ticket) to get to the departure city and/or your final destination.
• Make sure to check the available airlines directly. Some airlines make more award space available to members of their own programs. If you are having trouble finding award space and you have a way to get the type of miles you need, take the extra time to check the airline's own website.

For example, if you use the Air Canada website to search for awards across the Star Alliance, you will find the Singapore Airlines award space that is made available to partner programs. But when you search on Singapore Airlines’ own website, you might find additional availability that is only available when redeeming Singapore Airline miles.

• Keep trying. People cancel award tickets. Airlines periodically make new awards space available. Just because you couldn’t find any award availability today, doesn’t mean that you won’t find any tomorrow.
• Setup an alert. If you are willing to pay $10 per month for a subscription, you can use ExpertFlyer to set up award availability (or upgrade availability) alerts. About once per day, they'll check to see if award space has become available for your flight. If it has, they'll send you an email. You'll need to set up alerts for each individual flight you are interested in tracking. Keep in mind, that they can't continuously monitor availability information, so a seat may become available and then be claimed by another passenger, without triggering the alert. Nevertheless, availability alerts significantly increase your likelihood of eventually finding space to your destination. Easier Award Search Using Premium Award Searching Tools.
• Especially if you are looking for premium tickets, you might find availability once it gets close to your departure date. Airlines often postpone making premium award tickets available until they see how many business and first-class tickets they can sell.  It may make sense to book alternative flights and then look again when you get closer to departure. This happens with economy award space as well, but much less often.

This happens pretty reliably for Swiss Airline flights to Europe, EVA Air flights to Asia, and is the only way to book Lufthansa first class flights using partner miles. And happens fairly frequently with Cathay Pacific, Japanese Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and United.

• If you need space for more than two people, you might need to book the tickets in chunks. Especially for business and first class tickets, airlines may only make a limited number of seats available for award booking at any given time, but will add additional award space, once those seats are gone. For example, they may never show more than two available seats, but two additional seats might become available as soon as the existing two seats are booked. Depending on the costs of cancelling the award, you can book the available seats and hope that additional space opens up.

Award Tickets 101: The Basics

Search Segment-by-Segment to Find Hidden Award Space

Find All the Flight Options to Your Destination

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