There are many different award search tools that you can use when trying to find award flights. A few of the sites include: Point.me, AwardLogic, Points Path, and Award Tool to name just a few. One of my favorite sites to use is PointsYeah. PointsYeah is a free tool with a Kayak style interface that allows you to search for award flights.
PointsYeah has a free and paid version. There are many great features that you can use with the free version and for the majority of people the free version is going to be enough. I would start out with the free version but if you feel you want more than you can change to the paid version.
How to Sign Up
It is free to sign up for PointsYeah and all it takes is an email address. You will make a password and you are good to go. The other way that you can sign up is by using any Google account that you may have.
How to Use PointsYeah
PointsYeah is like other tools on the market that allow you to search from an origin airport, destination airport, and date of travel. You can search one way, round trip and multi city flights. The tool also allows you to pick the class of cabin, the number of passengers from 1-9 people and it allows you to specify how many adults and children that are flying.
There are 6 different bank programs that you can select from so that you can narrow down the results. The banks include:
- Chase Ultimate Rewards
- Amex Membership Rewards
- Bilt Rewards
- Capital One Miles
- Citi Thank You Points
- Wells Fargo.
You can also narrow down the airline programs you want to fly. PointsYeah searches 21 different airline programs. The programs include:
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
- American Airlines AAdvantage
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Capa ConnectMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- Frontier
- Iberia Plus Avios
- JetBlue True Blue
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Sas EuroBonus
- Spirit
- Tap Miles&Go
- Turkish Miles and Smiles
- United Mileage Plus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Virgin Australia Velocity
Once you have selected all of your preferences, you can click the orange “Yeah” button to do the search. PointsYeah is pretty fast taking 10-20 seconds to show your results. It may take a few seconds longer if you are doing a multi day search.
Once the results are shown, there are a number of other ways that you can filter your results to meet your needs. Just like the original search, you can filter the airline programs and bank programs.
The other filters include: stops, airlines, max points, max taxes, max duration, percentage of premium cabin, time (departure/arrival), aircrafts (type of aircraft flown), departure airports, arrival airports, and connecting airports.
There are also six sort options that you can choose. They are points low to high, quickest flights, taxes low to high, departure time, arrival time, and cash low to high.
Other Key Search Features
All of the above features make PointsYeah a great tool to use but there are more features that can help you search. These features help make PointsYeah one of the best search tools that is out there.
Multi Day Searches
This one feature is really a game changer. You can search up to 4 days on 21 different airlines at the same time. This can be really valuable when you have some flexibility in your dates. Instead of doing one day at a time like most sites do, you can work 4 times faster by doing 4 days at a time.
The results that you get from a search are summarized at the top of the page by the date. This can help you easily see if one day is better to fly from a point standpoint then other days.
Points Price Alerts
You can set up to 4 different alerts based on the amount of points you are wanting to use. PointsYeah will track the points price changes as well as available seats based on the amount of points you have determined.
You can set up alerts on the search result page or by clicking on the bell at the top of the page in the upper right corner. The box below will appear that you fill out for your alert.
Once you have set up the alert, they will send you emails when a flight that meets your criteria is available. This can really help you since they continuously monitor flights so that you don’t have to.
If you are doing a date range for point price alerts, each day of the date range is considered a search.
Customize Your Preferences
PointsYeah allows you to save a number of your preferences so that every time you do a search you won’t have to fill out the information each time.
The tool allows you to save your bank programs, airline programs, hotel programs, cabin, premium cabin percentage, flights search source, hotel search source, and home airport.
This can help you save time and effort if you do the same preferences each search and who doesn’t like to save time and effort.
Seeing More Detailed Itinerary Information
As with other airline search tools, in the initial search results, PointsYeah shows you the date of the flight, departure/arrival times, airline(s) being flown, flight number, class of fare, duration of the trip, how many stopovers, and all of the airports involved in the trip.
If you want to get more detailed information about the itinerary for the flight, you can directly click on the itinerary or the down arrow on the right side to see more details.
Helpful Itinerary Tips
Airline programs and bank programs have different nuances to them. Most travelers aren’t going to remember all of the different nuances with each program. PointsYeah will share with you different aspects to a result to help you along the way.
The below itinerary is for a flight from Raleigh, NC to Frankfurt, Germany. Some of the different aspects of the flight include:
Cancellation Policy: According to the results, this award has a $50 cancellation policy.
Stopover Guidelines: If a program allows stopovers, it tells you about them and what to do if you are considering doing a stopover. In this case, Flying Blue has free stopovers that you need to call in to book.
Points Purchase Bonus: In the above example, besides showing you the six transfer programs that you can use. It also shows you that there is a 35% bonus if you purchase points with the Flying Blue program. This can be helpful especially if you have a few points that you need to complete a booking.
Transfer Bonus: Many programs have transfer bonuses at different times. PointsYeah will show you if any of the bank programs have a transfer bonus going on. You can see that Chase is running a 25% bonus right now. So, instead of having to transfer 26,000 points, you would only have to transfer 21,000 points to book the flight.
Airport Transfers: This isn’t shown in the above example. There are times when you need to transfer from one airport in a city to another airport in that same city to catch your next flight. PointsYeah will show you if that is the case in the itinerary.
Daydream Explorer
Daydream Explorer allows you to search for dream trips. Just like with a regular search you can select all of the options you want for the flight.
There are a few things that you can do in Daydream Explorer that you can’t do in a regular search. Daydream Explorer allows you to select up to 3 different airports you want to depart from or arrive at in the same search. You can even select continents instead of airports to depart from and arrive at.
It also allows you to select specific dates that you are looking to travel or it can show you trips that you can take in a 60 day window.
You can also select specific aspects to a trip such as beach, family, honeymoon, and even the moon.
Paid Version
The paid version of PointsYeah has the same capabilities as the free version but with the following differences:
- 8 day one way searches instead of 4 days
- Round trip allows for 4 day windows in each direction
- 24 active alerts versus the 4 with the free version
The price for the paid version is $89.99 a year.
Final Thoughts
PointsYeah as I mentioned before is my favorite award search tool to use. It is fast and has many different features that I love, such as price alerts and a four day search window. It isn’t the only search tool that I use since there isn’t a perfect one in the market but it is the first one that I go to when starting an award search.
If you want to learn about how to save on travel, how to earn and maximize miles and points, and travel itineraries make sure to go to my blog at Travlewidstom.
