Any given flight has a certain number of seats available for booking. That number goes down as people book the flight. For loyalty program members, there is also the option to book a seat using points instead of cash. Typically, an airline will set aside a certain number of seats for this purpose (award seats/space). Over time, the airline may increase or even decrease the number of award seats available to be booked. This creates a limited quantity of seats bookable with points.
This is a good thing because it makes it a little harder to find these seats. Most people don’t know the process of booking these seats, or don’t take the time to do so, giving those of us in the points and miles game huge opportunities to travel while spending significantly less than everyone else.
To further complicate this, partner airlines have access to some, but not all, of those seats. This allows you to book a seat on a flight operated by one airline using points from one of their partner airlines. You can often book a flight using less points or sometimes less taxes and fees by using a partner airline. However, there is a catch. Not all award seats are bookable through partners.
An airline will designate certain flights to be bookable with points via a partner airline. In the points and miles space, we usually call these saver awards. There are a couple of reasons for this: these flights typically cost significantly less points via the airline operating the flight (thus saving points) and United actually labels these flights as saver awards. Note that certain partnerships may have access to space that would not typically be considered saver award space and is therefore not available to other partners.
Also, not every airline makes it easy to find seats for partner awards. Many will only let you search one day at a time, or you may even have to find a flight elsewhere then book it over the phone. Because of this, it’s important to know how you can find these saver awards.
For this article, we’ll just focus on the best ways to find saver award space for each alliance. If you can find saver award space through an airline in an alliance, you should be able to book that flight using any of the airlines in the alliance. However, be aware that there is a phenomenon known as phantom space where you might find an award on one site that is not actually available. For the most part, this isn’t too hard to avoid, but it can be a good idea to call and make sure the space is actually available or verify through the partner airline’s website before transferring any points..
General Rules
In general, saver awards will cost fewer points than the typical awards. So, no matter what site you are using to look for awards, the lowest points cost you can find is more likely to be a saver award. You can also use the fact that partner airlines can only be booked with points if the flight is a saver award to your advantage. For example, if you’re looking on aa.com (American Airlines) and you see an Alaska Airlines or a British Airways flight that is bookable with American Airlines miles, that flight must be a saver award for Alaska or British Airways since you can book it with American points.
If you want to book with a specific airline, you can start with a search for a flight on that airline and find one that costs fewer points than others. You can then verify that the flight you found is a saver award and bookable through the partner airline you want to use by searching for that specific flight on the partner’s website. In cases where the partner airline you want to use requires a phone booking, you could use a different partner airline to verify it’s a saver award, then call the airline you want to use to book the flight.
Maybe you aren’t particular which airline you fly with, but know which partner you want to use for booking. To find saver award space, just use the easiest tool within the alliance you’re looking at. You know it’s a saver award if it’s a flight on a partner airline. If the flight is operated by the airline whose tool you’re using, you can use the lower points price to get an idea of what is a saver award. Then you can find that specific flight on the partner airline you want to use and book the flight if it is available.
There are also many tools that can be used to find these awards as well. One of my favorites of these is www. pointsyeah.com. Using this tool, you can search for flights from one point to another, either roundtrip or one way. The tool will then show the flights bookable with points with taxes and fees. You can filter flights using multiple criteria allowing you to only book flights that match your preferences or points available. You can also set alerts when award space meeting certain conditions becomes available.
A tool like this can be incredibly useful as a starting point. I definitely suggest using PointsYeah if you are new to tools like this because it is very easy to use and has a lot of capability for free. There is also a paid version with added capabilities, but the free version honestly has enough capabilities to start. However, every tool has limitations. For this reason, it can be good to use multiple tools and even do individual searches outside of these tools.
Some other tools that you might find useful for flights are seats.aero, Roame.Travel, Points.Me, AwardLogic, SeatSpy, ExpertFlyer, and Flights Connections. For hotels, there is StayWithPoints, MaxMyPoint, AwardMapper, and Open Hotel Alert.
Now let’s look at the easiest ways to find saver awards for each alliance.
Star Alliance
The Star Alliance has one of the easiest ways to find saver award space: United. United airlines specifically labels these flights as a saver award. However, if you are logged in to your United Mileage account, you will see extra saver availability. These extra saver flights may not be bookable for partners, so if you are trying to find saver awards to book via another airline, don’t log in to your account when searching.
To search for these awards, simply go to United.com and put in your origin, destination, and flight date(s) and check the book with miles box. It can often be a good idea to search for one-way flights instead of round trips. This will give you more flexibility to book with multiple partners and get the most value out of your miles. However, some airlines will only let you book a round trip flight (e.g. ANA) or you may be able to get better value out of a round trip flight (e.g. Delta). So it can be good to search both one-way and roundtrip flights.
Once the search has populated results, you can browse the flights, either for the day you selected, or using the 30-day calendar feature. To find a saver award flight, look for days with the lowest amount of points needed, as these are more likely to be days with saver award flights. The nice thing is, United will put “saver award” right below the points price making it very clear what United flights should be available through other partners. And of course, any flights using partner airlines that are available on United should be bookable through other Star Alliance partners as well.
OneWorld Alliance
One of the best airline websites to find saver award space on OneWorld airlines is aa.com. Similar to united.com, all you have to do to see points redemptions for a specific destination is to click the redeem miles box.
American Airlines has a robust search tool on their site that allows you to see a whole month of availability at a time. Not only that, you can filter by airline allowing for specific redemptions. You can even see the airplane scheduled for the flight right in the search. This can be super useful for people looking for a specific flight product.
If you want to check for American Airlines availability on partners, Alaska Airlines is my choice for searching. It can also be very useful to confirm that you are able to see the same partner availability on multiple sites. Similar to American Airlines, you can use the calendar feature to see the lowest prices across multiple dates as well as filtering by airlines.
SkyTeam
To search for SkyTeam availability, I would recommend Delta or Virgin Atlantic. The Delta tool is very similar to the American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, or United search tools. There are options to view the lowest price per day for a whole month at a time, as well as filtering to nonstop only flights. Any flights bookable through Delta that are operated by another SkyTeam member should be bookable through any other SkyTeam member.
Now, if you want to find Delta availability, the best search tool is actually not a SkyTeam member, Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic has partnerships with Delta and Flying Blue (Air France/KLM. These are the two most commonly useful SkyTeam members, so being able to see both of these airlines through Virgin Atlantic is very useful. Keep in mind that the Virgin Atlantic search tool seems limited, but with a few tricks it can be just as useful as the other airline search tools we’ve discussed.
By editing the URL of an existing search, you can gain access to the calendar view, and search any flight for seat availability. For the calendar view, you need to first search for a flight using the points search. This is as straightforward as the other airline tools, but you’ll need to open the advanced search options in order to select the points option. If you aren’t able to select the points option, you can often switch some of the search options so that the book with points feature is available.,Then just click on the use points option and reset the other criteria to what you actually want.
When you complete your search, the website will pull up one week of availability including the date you selected. If there isn’t any availability you won’t see any dates at all. Unfortunately, you’ll have to search one week at a time until you find a week with a flight available. Once you can see at least one date with a flight available, you can edit the URL replacing “dates” with “calendar”. This then pulls up the 30-day calendar feature.
Another useful tool, specifically for delta flights, is the reward seat checker on Virgin Atlantic’s website. This is only available for flights operated by Virgin Atlantic and Delta. You will notice that there aren’t many airport options to search using this tool. However, by adjusting the URL you can see other potential flights.
We’ll look at Delta flights, since we are discussing how to find SkyTeam award space availability. First, select Delta in the Flying With dropdown. Then pick any available airports in the dropdowns for the origin and destination airports and the month you want to look at.
Once you search using these options, you’ll see a calendar view with information on what seats are bookable with points for each day. However, this is only showing a flight based on the initial airports you used, which most likely aren’t the flights you are looking for. To check for seats on the actual route you want, simply go into the URL and replace the 3-digit airport codes with the airports you actually want and hit enter. Make sure not to edit anything else.
Editing the URL in this way will pull up the reward seat checker for your desired route. You can then check for dates that Delta or Virgin Atlantic (depending on what you selected) has award seats available. You can also switch the airports so you can find award space on a returning flight as well. If there are seats available on a specific day, it will also break down how many seats are available in each class. If you want to fly using Delta One, this could be very useful for finding flights with seats available in that business class.
Now you’ve narrowed down to a single day that has award space available, and you can search for flights on that specific day. This can be extremely useful to find award space on Delta flights. Virgin Atlantic also has some pretty good value for booking Delta flights as well, and since they are transfer partners with multiple transferable points programs, getting those points is very easy.
Now you know how to find saver award space using many different methods. The best way to find award space is to look for it. You never know what you may find. The more you search, the easier it becomes, allowing you to do more searches in less time. It can be confusing and difficult at first, but with practice, you’ll be able to find great deals for your points without too much difficulty.