I really like point.me award search and I use it myself when trying to find award flights. Quickly search across most frequent flyer programs to see what flights are available to book using points, compare the cost of those awards, and get help with how to make the bookings at the lowest cost possible.
This is a premium service, but did you know that you can access it for free? And if you haven’t used it lately, it’s gotten far better in the last few months.
- The interface is very clean, and the results are reliable. They don’t seem to be caching award availability – what they show as available is what’s available at the time you search, and when they tell you what programs you can book through and the pricing this isn’t just a guess or assumption, they’ve checked that the partner actually shows the space.
- When point.me launched the tradeoff for this level of accuracy was speed. It was slow. It’s not slow anymore. They start to show results in about 10 seconds, and they’ve cut the time award searches take by about two thirds.
- They now display availability for co-terminal airports out of New York, Chicago, Washington DC, London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and Beijing when you search any of those cities. It doesn’t take a separate search to get results out of Tokyo Narita and Haneda. (I also like that I’m getting flexible date results automatically, +/- 1 day from what I search, and I can toggle across dates.)
So if you haven’t checked out point.me in awhile, you really should. And that’s double true because while their standard plan costs $129 per year, you can actually get their award search free.
Free Point.me Award Search For Amex Cardmembers
About a year ago American Express launched a partnership with Point.me. The idea is to help Amex Membership Rewards cardmembers get the best value out of their points.
The partnership lets you log in using your Amex credentials and search award space (plus, take advantage of all of their features like tutorials that walk you through transferring points and making the award booking) with all of the airline frequent flyer programs that American Express supports:
- Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan; ANA Mileage Club; Avianca LifeMiles; Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- oneworld: British Airways Executive Club; Cathay Pacific Asia Miles; Iberia Plus; Qantas Frequent Flyer; Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- SkyTeam: Aeromexico Rewards; Air France KLM Flying Blue; Delta SkyMiles; Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Non-alliance: aer lingus Aer Club; Emirates Skywards; Etihad Guest; JetBlue TrueBlue
When the Amex-Point.me partnership launched I thought it was only available to Platinum and Gold cardmembers. Something a reader tipped me to is that any Amex login seems to work so if you have a Delta or Hilton Amex I think you’re able to use this, too.
Free Point.me Award Search Through Bilt Rewards
Bilt Rewards also has a partnership with Point.me, and through the Bilt app and website you can use point.me search. This is limited to searching availability on Bilt’s transfer partners.
- Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Miles & Smiles, United Airlines MileagePlus, Avianca LifeMiles, TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
- SkyTeam: Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards
American Express gets you most options. Bilt adds United, TAP, Alaska and Turkish – though United, TAP and Turkish saver awards are available through the Amex partnership (via Air Canada et al) and Alaska saver space is available through it as well (via British Airways).
Transform Your Award Search
If you have any Amex card, definitely give free Point.me for Amex a try. Between these two free paths you really do have most everything. It doesn’t get you American Airlines flights that are not available to American’s partners (like Alaska and British Airways).
Point.me, by the way, is what Air France KLM cites as the reason they need to keep redemption rates low so that they win the competition for customers to transfer points into their program.
I have attempted to use this tool and I find it inaccurate when it comes to the number of points and availability. Especially when seeking Aeromexico Business Class availability
Be aware that the default sort prioritizes Membership Rewards partnerships so you have to click the fewest points tab to see what is cheapest if you have currency available with different airlines.
The point.me through Amex is fine, but it is biased, and does not include all airlines, so you are missing some key players when searching there. Separately, the Points Path extension to Google Flights can also be helpful, but it’ll slow down your search slightly as the details populate. All the above beats having to manually search each respective airlines’ platform for awards. Sometimes you get lucky.
@ Gary — Saves you time? It is so slow it is like watching paint dry.
I love this perk from Amex. I just used it to book an SAS flight from Oslo to Bergen (Norway) this summer, using Virgin America points transferred from Amex, for 5500 points. How many hours would it have taken me to find / figure our that opportunity on my own? I did have to call Virgin to actually book the flight, but hold times were short and the customer service agent was terrific.
You’d have to have very little skills in your life to resort to wasting your time with point.me.
I guess it helps you pimp amex credit cards though…
It’s been a while since I last used it, and it does seem to run much faster than before. Thanks, Gary.
Still way too slow. Not even close to the 10 seconds you indicate. So many alternatives now, and many of those cost less.