Seats.aero - a useful tool for finding Qantas & Velocity reward availability

[RooFlyer]

I'm interested to try it out again, but am holding off for now in the hope they'll run another Black Friday deal (that's open to previous subscribers).

I was looking to book a business through to Amstetdsm a year from now. I did get a ride through to AMS pretty easily using Velocity points flying Qatar, but about half the seats that seats.aero said were there for the couple of days I wanted weren’t on the actual website. Not uncommon and not surprising but I thought it might be a little bit better than that.

 

[clifford]

I was looking to book a business through to Amstetdsm a year from now. I did get a ride through to AMS pretty easily using Velocity points flying Qatar, but about half the seats that seats.aero said were there for the couple of days I wanted weren’t on the actual website. Not uncommon and not surprising but I thought it might be a little bit better than that.

Yes, you have to have your wits about you.

But I've found seats.aero to be the best tool I've come across to book premium award seats
ex-Ausralia.

 

[trendwhore]

I was looking to book a business through to Amstetdsm a year from now. I did get a ride through to AMS pretty easily using Velocity points flying Qatar, but about half the seats that seats.aero said were there for the couple of days I wanted weren’t on the actual website. Not uncommon and not surprising but I thought it might be a little bit better than that.

True many times Qantas flights don't appear either when they do on Qantas website, still.. I subscribe because it's saved me a ton

 

[drron]

Just a pity it doesn't do Life Miles any more.

 

[doctorstrangelove]

I purchased a membership today as part of their Black Friday sale. I decided to do a few dummy runs to see how comprehensive it is out of the gate. FYI there appears to be some issue with Aeroplan awards availability displaying correctly - seats.aero is not picking up Air Mauritius awards availability on Aeroplan. I've e-mailed seats.aero so they can look into it.

 

[levelnine]

I purchased a membership today as part of their Black Friday sale. I decided to do a few dummy runs to see how comprehensive it is out of the gate. FYI there appears to be some issue with Aeroplan awards availability displaying correctly - seats.aero is not picking up Air Mauritius awards availability on Aeroplan. I've e-mailed seats.aero so they can look into it.

Random search shows it picking it up for me:

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Random search shows it picking it up for me:
View attachment 415738

Ah, sorry, should have been more specific (I was in my e-mail to Aeroplan). It's PER - MRU - CDG & PER - MRU - LGW not displaying.

 

[levelnine]

Ah, sorry, should have been more specific (I was in my e-mail to Aeroplan). It's PER - MRU - CDG & PER - MRU - LGW not displaying.

seats.aero doesn't directly support connecting routes. You should be able to find availability by searching each segment though (unless Air Mauritus does married segments).

 

[anat0l]

seats.aero doesn't directly support connecting routes. You should be able to find availability by searching each segment though (unless Air Mauritus does married segments).

Basically this is the right idea. seats.aero, I believe, only gives connecting route availability if it were sold like that by the respective FF programme.

It's usually better just to research the availability of each segment, then piece it together. But of course, sometimes seats.aero doesn't quite get it right (especially when seats.aero draws on its saved searches information rather than live data), so it always pays to check the relevant FFP's page for availability.

When seats.aero returns connecting options, it is surprising what it can return as options (much as what some of us see in some searches, e.g. on QF or VA, from triple segment head scratchers to the chestnut short segment in J and longer segment in Y options)

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Basically this is the right idea. seats.aero, I believe, only gives connecting route availability if it were sold like that by the respective FF programme.

It's usually better just to research the availability of each segment, then piece it together. But of course, sometimes seats.aero doesn't quite get it right (especially when seats.aero draws on its saved searches information rather than live data), so it always pays to check the relevant FFP's page for availability.

When seats.aero returns connecting options, it is surprising what it can return as options (much as what some of us see in some searches, e.g. on QF or VA, from triple segment head scratchers to the chestnut short segment in J and longer segment in Y options)

Thanks for clarifying. My first few dummy searches threw up lots of connecting flights so I assumed it would do that for all searches. Not as automated as I would have liked if I have to potentially search by individual segment to build an itinerary, but not the end of the world.

 

[SeatsIan]

Thanks for clarifying. My first few dummy searches threw up lots of connecting flights so I assumed it would do that for all searches. Not as automated as I would have liked if I have to potentially search by individual segment to build an itinerary, but not the end of the world.

We do support live search for Pro users which can search any route combination, however this is currently disabled for Air Canada due to legal issues. Our status page shows a ️ for the supported programs with this feature. You’ll also see the ️ icon next to live search results in Search.

 

[doctorstrangelove]

We do support live search for Pro users which can search any route combination, however this is currently disabled for Air Canada due to legal issues. Our status page shows a ️ for the supported programs with this feature. You’ll also see the ️ icon next to live search results in Search.

@SeatsIan thanks, hope you can get the legal issues worked out with AC.

 

[DejaBrew]

@SeatsIan - any chance of some Black Friday love for existing/lapsed subscribers?

 

[SeatsIan]

@SeatsIan - any chance of some Black Friday love for existing/lapsed subscribers?

We don't mind if existing/lapsed users make a new account to take advantage of the Black Friday deal! You can just use a different email address/etc. It's just a bit difficult to support applying it to existing accounts in an economical way.

 

[DejaBrew]

We don't mind if existing/lapsed users make a new account to take advantage of the Black Friday deal! You can just use a different email address/etc. It's just a bit difficult to support applying it to existing accounts in an economical way.

Cheers @SeatsIan - appreciate the reply and thanks for confirming

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Hi all, I've been playing around with seats.aero a little more and I was wondering if anyone had any strategies about the best rewards alerts to set up to fly to and from Europe to Australia given the lack of a 'direct route' meaning you can't simply just set your desired airports and set a reminder?

I'm looking to fly between ADL and DUB for the most part, but any tips in general appreciated! It's impossible to set up an awards search even for such broad categories as DUB - ANZ or ADL - EUR. EUR - ANZ does work but I figure that in all likelihood that will just spit out rewards availability on routes where I'd have to do a manual connection at the beginning and end to reach my final destination i.e. x2 unprotected transfers and maybe another protected transfer on the rewards seat. That adds an awful lot of time and uncertainty to my travel.

For DUB - ADL, the only way to travel between them with just one transfer is either via DOH or DXB (but there's no way I'd book a redemption seat on EK to ADL given the extortionate carrier charges and substandard J class provided). I guess I have to create individual searches e.g. DUB - DOH, then DOH - DUB to pull this off. That wouldn't be too bad.

For Aeroplan redemptions for Star Alliance it gets more complicated though - there's no way of doing DUB - ADL without two transfers. Looking through flightconnections for options I'm guessing I set up:
1. DUB - IST, FRA, MUC, ZRH
2. IST, FRA, MUC, ZRH - SIN (the only Star Alliance connection from ADL towards EUR),
3. SIN - ADL

Depending on how broadly I set my search dates, my worry is that I'm going to get a lot of e-mail/SMS spam that will be of no use to me e.g. I'll be informed there's availability on DUB - EUR (there's a lot of permutations and combinations there!) when there's no awards availability on the other segments.

I'd greatly appreciate any wisdom from my fellow AFF members on their approach to seats.aero and Europe to Australia. I suspect that there's no easier way other than what I've described, but your constructive input is valued. TIA.

 

[SeatsIan]

Hi all, I've been playing around with seats.aero a little more and I was wondering if anyone had any strategies about the best rewards alerts to set up to fly to and from Europe to Australia given the lack of a 'direct route' meaning you can't simply just set your desired airports and set a reminder?

I'm looking to fly between ADL and DUB for the most part, but any tips in general appreciated! It's impossible to set up an awards search even for such broad categories as DUB - ANZ or ADL - EUR. EUR - ANZ does work but I figure that in all likelihood that will just spit out rewards availability on routes where I'd have to do a manual connection at the beginning and end to reach my final destination i.e. x2 unprotected transfers and maybe another protected transfer on the rewards seat. That adds an awful lot of time and uncertainty to my travel.

For DUB - ADL, the only way to travel between them with just one transfer is either via DOH or DXB (but there's no way I'd book a redemption seat on EK to ADL given the extortionate carrier charges and substandard J class provided). I guess I have to create individual searches e.g. DUB - DOH, then DOH - DUB to pull this off. That wouldn't be too bad.

For Aeroplan redemptions for Star Alliance it gets more complicated though - there's no way of doing DUB - ADL without two transfers. Looking through flightconnections for options I'm guessing I set up:
1. DUB - IST, FRA, MUC, ZRH
2. IST, FRA, MUC, ZRH - SIN (the only Star Alliance connection from ADL towards EUR),
3. SIN - ADL

Depending on how broadly I set my search dates, my worry is that I'm going to get a lot of e-mail/SMS spam that will be of no use to me e.g. I'll be informed there's availability on DUB - EUR (there's a lot of permutations and combinations there!) when there's no awards availability on the other segments.

I'd greatly appreciate any wisdom from my fellow AFF members on their approach to seats.aero and Europe to Australia. I suspect that there's no easier way other than what I've described, but your constructive input is valued. TIA.

I added DUB/ADL for Qantas/Velocity/Aeroplan if that’s useful for you! You should be able to create alerts for it now.

Generally we suggest creating alerts for the longest part of your journey, but this naturally can be pretty tricky for Australia->Europe so we can typically override and add a route upon request (only for this specific edge case). In the future we are going to support live alerts for any route, we’re just trying to figure out how to support that sustainably.

 

[doctorstrangelove]

I added DUB/ADL for Qantas/Velocity/Aeroplan if that’s useful for you! You should be able to create alerts for it now.

Generally we suggest creating alerts for the longest part of your journey, but this naturally can be pretty tricky for Australia->Europe so we can typically override and add a route upon request (only for this specific edge case). In the future we are going to support live alerts for any route, we’re just trying to figure out how to support that sustainably.

@SeatsIan thank you - that is very generous of you to do so for what if I'm honest is a very niche market (the Irish diaspora is relatively small in ADL; PER or MEL is another story)! I've set up my desired flight alerts now. Really impressed with the response to unintentional customer feedback! I will recommend seats.aero to my colleagues!