Want to book an award ticket? Here is the tool that was missing

Foreword, the instrument we discuss in this article is called Seat Spy is a startup and as such does not yet monitor every company in the world.

All frequent flyers, and serial accumulators of points and miles, know that the hardest part of the reward travel Is to find the vacancy.

Thanks to the frequent bonuses it is possible to accumulate a lot of points, but the difficult thing is to find available places and take advantage when possible, the opportunity to option them And then redeem them.

We have explained in many articles how one should approach the procedure for booking the first award ticket and dedicated, of course, a special to the award tickets with Alitalia.

Today, however, we want to talk about a new site that allows you to search, in a simple and intuitive way, in one panel the availability of seats in various classes in many airlines, which in detail are:

• Air France
• KLM
• British Airways
• Virgin Atlantic
• United
• American Airlines

In addition to these, many more will come in the coming months.

How to make points quickly without spending (almost) anything

Obviously To get points to use, you must first earn them, one of the methods is shopping at Esselunga: Strawberry points allow you to get double points, because in addition to earning grocery points, you accumulate ton also those on your credit card. Then there is an incredible offer that allows you, if you are new to reward travel, to make enough points to go (when you can) anywhere in the world paying only taxes. This offer is linked to the Mediolanum's new Selfy checking account and credit card American Express Gold.

What Seatspy offers

It is not the first tool of this type, but it is definitely the simplest and most intuitive one that can help novices to this game find vacancies.

As mentioned at the moment it allows you to look up the availability of award seats, in the various travel classes, of 6 airlines, but the most important thing is that with one click you can know on the specific route the cost in terms of points/miles and the availability for the next 12 months on all routes operated by a specific airline.

All this is not only beautiful but also free.

Two other functions are equally important, but are chargeable:

1. SMS and Whatsapp alerts
2. The "where can I go" mode, if you do not know all the destinations of a single company you will only need to choose where you want to leave from to get the list of destinations and costs of each individual ticket

How SeatSpy works

Just go to the, choose the airline, route, number of seats and, if necessary, the desired travel class, in a few seconds the system will respond with the calendar for the next 12 months and details, day by day, of available seats.

Clicking on the date will open a pop-up listing the remaining seat availability and the cost of the ticket. Clicking on the logo of the chosen airline will link you directly to the section of the site where you can proceed to purchase your ticket.

The system is super simple and, as mentioned above, is free, placing no limits on the number of consultations one can make to search for the desired ticket.

Where can I go

This feature is chargeable and allows you to seek inspiration when you do not know all the destinations of a carrier or when you are not sure if you have enough miles available and are looking for an overview.

At the moment this feature is only available for British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, but it should be coming soon for the other airlines as well.

As with the basic search, the same information must be entered here, with the addition of the approximate date on which you intend to travel. A map with all reachable destinations from the selected airport will be shown.

Creating SMS/Whatsapp alerts

Surely the most interesting feature is the one that allows you to set real-time alerts on specific routes.

The route, date requested, number of tickets and class of travel are decided. The moment the system detects any news, a notification will immediately be sent to the user's cell phone.

Caution. Unlike how Alitalia has historically always behaved, all other airlines have different policies regarding award tickets.

Six seats in biz and first classes are also released, and new seats are also added over time based on the fill rate of the plane, so the alert allows it to activate in real time as soon as a notification is received from the system.

How much does it cost and why does it make sense to pay

The answer is it depends. If you are a serial traveler, the investment can pay for itself, as well as if you are looking for "rare" tickets (first class seats or extremely hot dates). Conversely, if you do not need the alerts or other paid features, the basic version is sufficient.

As you can see, the differences between the free and paid versions is that the former allows you to search on a limited number of companies, while Premium and First Class add alerts, a "where can I go" feature, and little else.

This article Is part of our toolbox, or a series of content aimed at explaining how to maximize the use of points and miles and how to get the best possible experience when traveling (free or paid).

• Frequent flyer tools
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