Award flights
Award flights watches award availability — the seats you can book with points and miles — across many airline loyalty programs at once. It's the companion to the Flight Tracker: that one watches cash fares, this one watches award space. Find it under Travel → Flights → Award.
Connect your seats.aero account
Award space is powered by seats.aero — a real-time database covering business and first class availability across 17+ loyalty programs. To search live award space, you need a seats.aero Pro account.
- Sign up for seats.aero Pro.
- In seats.aero, go to Account → API and copy your Partner API key — it starts with
pro_. - In OrientME, open Travel → Flights → Award, click Connect account, paste the key, and Save key.
Until connected, the Award tab shows sample results so you can see what the feature looks like. Once you're connected, you can disconnect any time from the Disconnect link in the info strip at the top of the tab.
Not sure if seats.aero is right for you? Browse the sample results first — they're real-looking award fares across popular routes so you can see exactly what you'd get.
Create a watch
Open the Award tab and click Add Watch:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Origins (required) | One or more origin airport codes, e.g. JFK, EWR, BOS |
| Destinations (required) | One or more destination codes, e.g. LHR, CDG, FRA |
| Cabin | Business, First, Premium Economy, or Economy |
| Target date (required) | The date you'd ideally fly |
| ± days | How many days either side of the target to search (e.g. ±3) |
| Label | A friendly name like "Summer Europe" |
| Max miles | Hide options that cost more than this many points |
| Max taxes ($) | Hide options whose cash taxes/fees are above this |
| Max hrs | Hide options whose total trip time is longer than this |
| Stops | Any stops, Non-stop only, or Max 1 stop |
| Pay with | Pick the card whose points you'll use — Amex, Chase, Capital One, Citi, or Bilt — and the watch is limited to the loyalty programs those points transfer into. Cards you've saved balances for in Award Points are listed first, under Your cards |
| Programs | Limit to specific loyalty programs (e.g. Aeroplan, Flying Blue) — set automatically when you choose a Pay with card, or type your own |
| Airlines | Limit to specific operating airlines, e.g. BA, VS |
| Sort | Rank results by lowest miles, lowest taxes, or shortest trip |
| Results | How many trips to keep per refresh |
Entering several Origins or Destinations airports widens the search across a whole city or region in one watch. Origins, Destinations, and a target date are all you strictly need; everything else narrows the field.
You can also set up an email alert from the create form — see Get an email when space opens below.
Search now, before you save
Not sure a route has any award space? Click Search now in the form to run a one-off search without saving a watch. You get the same ranked table you'd see on a saved watch — under a "save the watch to track these over time" header — so you can sanity-check the route and tune your filters first.
Refresh and read the results
Click a watch's refresh button to check current availability, or use Refresh All in the top-right to re-check every watch at once. OrientME searches your date window across the programs you allowed and shows a ranked table of real trips — date, route, program, miles, cash taxes, total duration, stops, and operating airlines. The watch row summarises the best miles (with the cheapest program), taxes, duration, how many trips were found, and when it was last checked, so a glance tells you whether it's worth a closer look. Results persist between visits, so you can compare against the last time you checked.
Click the route on a watch row to expand its ranked trip table.
Open a result for the details
In the ranked table, click Book on a trip to expand the full itinerary: each flight's number, times, aircraft, and cabin. You also get two ways to book:
- Book with your points — the cards whose points can book this exact flight (Amex, Chase, Capital One, Citi, Bilt), each showing how many of those points it costs. Most transfers are 1:1, but where a card transfers at a worse rate the cost reflects it (and the rate is shown next to it). A live transfer bonus appears as a +30%-style badge, with the cost already bonus-adjusted. And if you've saved balances in Award Points, each card shows where you stand — ✓ you have 82k when your balance covers it, or how far short you are. If no major card transfers to that program, the row says so — so you know you'd need that airline's own miles.
- Airline booking sites — direct links to each loyalty program to lock the seat in, with a short note on how that program actually tickets partner awards. Some partners can only be booked by phone (ANA through Virgin Atlantic, for example) — so a seat you see here but can't find on the airline's own website is usually still bookable; call the program with the exact flight and date.
These details load when you open the trip, so the main table stays fast.
Already know which card's points you're sitting on? Set Pay with to that card when you create the watch — every result is then something you can actually book, and the Book with your points panel shows the exact points cost. Keep those balances — and the transfer bonuses running right now — on the Award Points page; the Award tab's info strip links straight to it (Track your balances → Award Points).
Get an email when space opens
Award space is volatile and you won't be staring at the Award tab all day, so a watch can email you the moment a seat drops to your target. Set an alert either when you create a watch (the Alert toggle in the form) or any time afterward from a watch's bell button:
- Turn the alert On.
- Set the ≤ miles target — the most points you'd be willing to spend.
- Pick How often a still-available seat may re-notify you:
- Every check — email on every check (about once a day) while a seat is at or below your target.
- Weekly — at most one reminder every 7 days.
- Only new lows — only when a seat beats the last one you were alerted about.
A further drop below the last alert always emails immediately, in every mode. Alerts go to your account email (shown in the alert box) — there's no separate address to set, so an alert can never be sent anywhere but your own inbox. The email includes the route and a link straight back to the Award tab.
A watch's bell shows lit when an alert is set and muted when it isn't. Refreshes happen automatically in the background, so you'll hear about a great seat even if you never open the app.
Set a tight Max miles and Max taxes on the watch and a sensible alert target so a refresh surfaces — and an email flags — only the deals actually worth booking, then jump on them.
Manage watches
Each watch row has buttons to refresh, set its alert (bell), edit its search criteria (pencil), duplicate it (copy), and delete it. Editing changes only the route and filters — it never touches the alert, which you manage from the bell. Deleting a watch clears its saved results and result history too.
Award flights is a personal feature, like the rest of Travel. Found the flight you want? Once it's booked, add it to a trip under Logistics to keep it with the rest of your itinerary.
On the go? Award flights works on the mobile app too — the Travel → Flights screen has an Award segment with the same watches, search, ranked results, and miles alerts. Connect your seats.aero account on web first, then search and refresh watches from either device.