Maximize your loyalty points with AwardFares, an excellent tool for simplifying the search for award tickets. Thanks to its intuitive features, you can quickly find the best available flight options and prices to save time and points.

AwardFares is an online platform designed to simplify and optimize the search for award tickets. By centralizing information from different loyalty programs, this tool enables both novice and expert travellers to find award tickets at the best possible price. Its integration of the major airline alliances and its advanced search options make it a very interesting tool for planning complex trips.

Although other tools, such as ExpertFlyer, Point.me or Seats.aero, offer similar specific features, I find that AwardFares stands out for its real-time results and chronological view. Secondly, the tool combines the speed and breadth of global searches with advanced customization and planning tools, meeting the needs of a wide range of travellers.

The use of AwardFares is justified for several reasons. Firstly, saving time is a major argument. Rather than browsing airline or loyalty program websites individually, AwardFares lets you carry out a centralized search, bringing together all available options in one place.

Secondly, the real-time results save us from frustration, as there should be no ghost results when we arrive to book. Then, the tool offers additional precision by highlighting options often ignored by traditional search engines, such as the “saver” price search.

Finally, its flexibility means it can meet the varied needs of users, whether they are looking for direct flights or are prepared to accept stopovers to save points, unlike other programs where you can only search on a route where there are direct flights.

AwardFares simplifies an often tedious and time-consuming process, especially when faced with the slowness of some airline websites. With this tool, all you have to do is enter your departure airport, destination and desired dates to access an overview of available flights. This approach eliminates the need to search date by date manually. You can also select up to five frequent flyer programs to compare options.

When a specific search is performed (for example, from airport X to airport Y on a specific date), AwardFares retrieves the data directly from the airlines. On the other hand, broader searches, including multiple dates or regions, do not activate this real-time process, but rely on results previously found by other users.

To select a date range, hold down the “shift” key to select an entire period rather than a single day. This feature is particularly useful for flexible travellers looking for the best rates.

Expanded searches allow you to specify a country, continent or entire region as your destination. As mentioned above, they do not launch new searches for every possible route. These results come only from searches performed by other users. For example, if flights between Montreal and Paris, Brussels or Madrid have recently been searched for, these options will appear in the list when you explore fares to Europe from Montreal.

To obtain up-to-date data directly from the airlines, it is necessary to specify specific airports or metropolitan areas, such as BRU, MAD or PAR (including CDG and ORY for Paris).

AwardFares also offers open itinerary searches, allowing you to explore options without a fixed destination, i.e. from “anywhere” to “anywhere”. This is a promising feature, but I found it difficult to filter results effectively. For example, when searching for all possible flights from YUL, error messages frequently appeared. Although some affordable results are displayed (such as FRA to ARN), they lack relevance if you’re not already in FRA.

Nevertheless, it is possible to define a departure airport with a filter, or to search for a destination “anywhere”. However, results are only displayed if they have been previously found by other users.

Viewing availability in calendar format is one of the key features of AwardFares. It allows you to quickly identify the days when award tickets are most available, and to see the number of seats available. This view is particularly useful for families looking to book multiple tickets.

Users can adjust their dates according to availability and compare a large period at a glance, a major advantage for long-term planning. However, this function requires users to manually click on each date to obtain detailed results, unless these are already stored in the tool’s database.

To speed up the process, you can launch several searches simultaneously by selecting the dates of interest and letting AwardFares work in the background; the “magnifying glass” icon above each date in the calendar view allows you to relaunch searches in real time for precise, up-to-date results.

The results are clearly presented, making them easy to read and analyze. For example, the availability and quantity of award tickets in the various classes of service are colour-coded for easy identification. Detailed information, such as flight schedules, flight numbers and partner airlines, gives users the tools they need to make informed decisions, especially if aircraft choice is an important criterion for you. Additionally, itineraries can be saved for later analysis simply by clicking on the little “+” box to the right of each line.

One of the greatest assets of AwardFares is its ability to compare options between different loyalty programs. Comparing points costs between different programs is a major advantage, enabling travellers to quickly identify the most economical options and the best program to transfer their Membership Rewards points to.

I took the time to cross-check the results provided by AwardFares with the official airline websites. On the Aeroplan side, the results are globally representative in terms of availability, although the tool does not take into account my preferential fare linked to my Aeroplan credit card .

Here are the results I found with AwardFares:

And here’s what I see on Air Canada:

We can see thatAwardFares offers a fairly accurate estimate of prices in points for Aeroplan.

As for Flying Blue for this same route, here are the results obtained with AwardFares:

Whereas the results on the Flying Blue website for the same flight are as follows:

The points-based fare is identical for economy class, but there is a slight difference for economy privilege and business class. Plus, the fees associated with Flying Blue are in US dollars, whereas with Aeroplan, they are in Canadian dollars. So always check with the official website to be sure you’re getting the right information.

AwardFares simplifies access to the availability of major airline alliances, including Star Alliance, Oneworld and SkyTeam. By pooling this information, it’s easy to take advantage of airline partnerships and compare all your options.

However, it is not possible to search directly for Oneworld flights with programs using the Avios currency. To find these flights, it is necessary to select American Airlines AAdvantage or Alaska Mileage Plan in the tool. This is a significant disadvantage for Canadians, as the main way to earn AAdvantage miles is via RBC Rewards, which is much more limited compared to Avios. The latter has a direct accumulation method, more transfer partners and rates that are often more advantageous, i.e. with generous bonuses. Additionally, unlike Avios, there is no solution for earning Alaska Mileage Plan miles directly via credit cards in Canada.

Although this tool allows you to explore the availability of Oneworld flights via these programs, the prices and fees displayed will not always be perfectly accurate if you use Avios to finalize the booking after a search carried out with another program. However, it remains a practical solution for locating availability, even if the final Avios costs may differ slightly.

Here are the air programs available on AwardFares:

This tool also lets you quickly find flight times and availability in each fare class, so you know how many passengers are on the plane. This is a very interesting feature, as it helps to temper expectations. Indeed, if the business class cabin is already full, even if you set an alert, the chances of finding a seat are slimmer.

What’s more, this feature is handy for determining your chances of upgrading with an upgrade wager or upgrade credits.

For flexible travellers or those with specific itineraries in mind, availability alerts are a very useful feature. Once configured, they enable users to receive notifications as soon as an award ticket matching their criteria becomes available. This service saves users the hassle of constantly checking availability, while increasing their chances of securing coveted seats.

To create an alert, go to the “Alerts“ page and click on “Add Alert“ on the right-hand side of the screen. You can then select your loyalty program, define the route and the date for which you wish to create an alert. It is also possible to choose the class of service and activate the +/- 1 day alert option if you have a certain flexibility.

For example, I’ve set up alerts for business class flights to Australia from California with Aeroplan, next March.

Finally, if you wish, you can even create an alert for a specific flight number.

”Seat maps” option in AwardFares allows you to view the location of seats that are free, occupied or blocked by the airline. Although the results are generally accurate for flights within the next 24 hours, the seat map does not necessarily reflect the actual number of tickets sold. Indeed, many passengers don’t pay to choose their seats in advance, or simply wait until check-in to do so, so an empty seat plan doesn’t necessarily mean the flight is empty.

This AwardFares feature comes in handy because you don’t need to find the right aircraft model with your date and flight number; the tool does it for you!

To maximize results, it is advisable to remain flexible on travel dates. By adjusting plans slightly, a user can gain access to award tickets that are difficult to obtain at other times. AwardFares lets you do this very quickly with its chronological view. Furthermore, doing your research well in advance (ideally a year in advance), especially for high-season periods, greatly increases your chances of success. Or very last minute if you’re very flexible with your plans!

Although powerful, AwardFares depends on data provided by frequent flyer programs. Some flights may not appear in the results, due to airline restrictions. Also, although the search is carried out in real time, errors may creep into the results. So it’s always a good idea to check directly with the frequent flyer program before making up your mind or finalizing a booking.

AwardFares stands out as an essential tool for travellers wishing to maximize the value of their points. Thanks to its many features, ease of use and customization options, it can meet the expectations of even the most demanding users. Whether you’re an occasional traveller or a loyalty program regular, AwardFares is a great resource that will save you time and energy when planning your travels with points.

Plus, AwardFares offers impressive flexibility to explore travel options according to your specific needs. For example, it is possible to search for itineraries based on a specific number of points, a particularly useful feature for optimizing your bookings. While there is room for improvement, such as simplified navigation to quickly access available dates without having to click on “show more” and scroll through the results to find what suits you, the AwardFares team continues to refine its tools to better meet user expectations.

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