Seats Aero is an award flight search tool that helps you quickly find possible award seats across multiple airlines and programs. It can save time, but it is not perfect. This review looks at where Seats Aero works well and where it falls short.
What does Seats Aero do
Finding award flight availability across multiple airline programs can be time-consuming, as most programs require separate searches. Seats Aero addresses this by showing award availability across multiple airline programs in one place, reducing the need to search each airline website individually.
But does it do good?
Free vs Pro
Seats Aero offers both Free and Pro versions, with several features only available on the Pro plan. Below is a quick overview of what is available in each.
| Features | Free (Sign Up) | Pro (Sign Up) |
| Airline Programs | 24 | 24 |
| Award Search (Live+Cache) | Yes (For 60 Days) | Yes |
| Full Year Search (Live+Cache) | No | Yes |
| Advance Filter Search | No | Yes |
| Multiple Days Search | ± 3 days | ± 180 days |
| Multi City Codes Search | Cache | Can be Live |
| Custom Airport Codes | No | Yes |
| Award Alerts | Limited | Unlimited |
| Seats Map | No | Yes |
| Best Suited For | Occasional award searches | Regular & Advanced Users |
What works for Seats Aero
Here are the areas where Seats Aero performs well.
Huge List of Airline Partners
Seats Aero can search award availability across around 24 airline programs. While not all programs are always available due to occasional data or system issues, it still covers most major airline loyalty programs. This broad coverage makes it useful for quickly scanning award availability across multiple airlines.
- Aeromexico
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- Alaska Atmos Rewards
- American AAdvantage
- Azul Fidelidade
- Copa ConnectMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Ethiopian ShebaMiles
- Finnair Plus
- GOL Smiles
- JetBlue TrueBlue
- Lufthansa Miles & More
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- SAS EuroBonus
- Saudia AlFursan
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- Turkish Miles&Smiles
- United MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic
- Virgin Australia Velocity
Quick Award Search
Many award tools can feel slow when searching for award flights. Seats Aero stands out for its speed and ability to return results quickly, especially when searching flexible dates or multiple routes.
Multi-City Codes
Multi-city codes are one of Seats Aero’s strongest features and are rarely available in other award tools. This allows you to search across multiple airports within a region using a single query.
Sometimes, you may get cached results for multi-city codes, but even then, multi-city codes remain useful for finding opportunities and then creating positioning flights around them.
Custom Airport Codes
If a specific airport or region is not included in the default multi-city codes, Seats Aero allows you to create custom airport codes. This is particularly useful for more complex travel planning, such as trips involving secondary airports or positioning flights.
Advance Filter Options
Seats Aero’s filter options are a major time saver. You can filter by airline, exclude specific carriers, narrow down cabin options, and, in some cases, filter by taxes. Cabin filters are especially helpful if you are targeting only Business or First Class.
Airline Specific Award Flight Tracking
Seats Aero allows tracking award availability for specific airlines’ cabins, such as Lufthansa First Class or Qatar Airways Qsuites. This is useful if your goal is to quickly find the award availability of these cabins.
Unlimited Award Alerts with SMS
Award alerts do not guarantee availability, but they can still be useful. With Seats Aero Pro, you can create unlimited award alerts and receive notifications via email or SMS when availability appears.
Full Year Cache Award Flights Availability
Seats Aero is one of the few tools that can show cached award availability across an entire year for certain airline programs. This is useful for identifying patterns, understanding seasonal availability, and analysing how consistently a route releases award seats.
Seats Map
Seats Aero also provides seat maps for certain flights, a feature not commonly available in award search tools. This can be helpful for checking cabin layouts and seat availability, particularly in Business or First Class.
What Seats Aero Can Improve
Even though Seats Aero is my go-to award tool, there are a few areas where it could improve.
Gaps in Airline Programs
Seats Aero claims award access across around 24 airline programs. However, availability for some programs is either consistently degraded or temporarily unavailable. For example, Copa ConnectMiles often have limited access, while Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer has experienced outages.
Many of these programs are still in beta, so reliability should improve over time, but this remains a limitation today.
Limited Airline Partner Search
Seats Aero primarily searches award availability at the program level for a few airline programs, such as Turkish Miles&Smiles, Singapore Airlines Krisflyer, and Emirates Skywards, rather than exhaustively across all partner airlines within a program. In these cases, partner availability often still needs to be checked directly with the airline or loyalty program.
Cached Data and Inconsistent Results
Seats Aero distinguishes between live searches and cached data. In broad searches such as those using multi-city codes, the tool may not be able to run a complete live scan across all routes. In these cases, Seats Aero still attempts live searches where possible and may add results from cached data. You should always check whether individual results are live or cached and verify availability directly with the airline before booking.
Limited Free Version
The free version of Seats Aero is very basic and lacks features that some other award tools include at no cost. For instance, tools like PointsYeah or AwardTool allow limited live searches over a small date range in their free tiers.
With Seats Aero, meaningful use generally requires upgrading to the Pro plan.
Designed for Advanced Users
Seats Aero is not beginner-friendly. It assumes familiarity with award travel concepts such as airline codes, routing logic, and advanced filters. Features like manual airline code entry and detailed filtering can feel overwhelming for users who are new to award travel. This design works well for experienced users but creates a learning curve for beginners.
Hotel Award Search
Seats Aero also offers a hotel award search tool through Rooms Aero. However, it does not function like a traditional hotel award search engine. The interface and logic are different and require time to learn.
For beginners, this can feel unintuitive, while advanced users may still find it useful once they understand how it works.
Should You Buy Seats Aero Pro
If you already understand award searches or have used the free version of Seats Aero, the Pro subscription can make sense. It unlocks essential features for regular use, such as alerts, advanced filters, and broader visibility.
However, Seats Aero Pro is not a good choice if your main goal is to search for hotel awards. There are other tools that handle hotel awards more effectively.
Who Should Use Seats Aero
Seats Aero works best if you already understand the basics of award flight searches. For beginners, it makes sense to first learn how airline programs and award bookings work. Seats Aero can be a powerful and enjoyable tool once you are comfortable exploring and interpreting the data it shows.
Bottomline
Seats Aero is not just another award search tool. It is a discovery engine built to find award availability across multiple airline programs. However, it requires a basic understanding of award travel to use effectively.
