how the tool works that helps you take advantage of your miles

We have heard it several times or it has happened to many: It’s not always easy to use miles or find the flight we need to redeem them.

In order to simplify this process that can often be frustrating, AwardFares is presented as “the Google for flights with miles”.

It’s a flight search engine which has the particularity of focusing on those tickets that can be paid with miles or points. The tool is dedicated to solving (or at least trying to) this question: how to choose the perfect flight using – in the most effective way – the accumulated points or miles.

In the world of mileage programs “there are those who love them and those who hate them”says Matías Mute, from Air Promotions, a site specialized in finding the most convenient alternatives for traveling.

Of the negative side of the miles questionMute highlights the difficulties of these programs “to calculate how many miles you need, where you will be able to travel, when they can be redeemed, how they should be accumulated, what mileage programs to use… they have a higher level of complexity than finding a cheap ticket because it adds up to the whole equation of how to accumulate miles efficiently.

And to this is added that “airlines can close their mileage programs from one day to the next or devalue their miles and it is no longer enough for anything.”

At the far end, the positive of the miles: “When you accumulate them you realize that you have enough for a trip to Chile, for example. Or if you see a good promotion for a long flight to Europe or the United States leaving from San Pablo, Foz de Iguazú, Santiago de Chile or Lima, the miles can help you get to that nearby airport,” says Mute.

AwardFares has just “landed” in Latin America with its Spanish version and with several frequent flyer programs that may interest many.

“Most people get frustrated when they try to use their points. Spend months or years putting together and then can’t find suitable options. Airline portals are complex and elaborate, for example, we spent hours searching for flights on different dates and routes until we found a convenient option,” says Germán Ceballos, Marketing Director of the company and assures: “We created AwardFares to solve that.” .

The app was born in StockholmSweden, in 2017 and since its launch in 2018, improvements and more functionalities have been added, such as the possibility of creating alerts or searching for multiple stops.

In addition to looking for options to redeem miles, the tool promises “optimize points” to “plan an economical and efficient trip.”

This means that it doesn’t just show available flights with miles; It also guides users to understand how many additional miles and fees will be needed.

And, another fundamental point, allows you to create custom alerts for the routes one is looking for.

Currently, the application has more than 40,000 users and support for 15 frequent flyer programs all over the world.

• American Airlines Advantage
• Air France-KLM Flying Blue
• Delta SkyMiles
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• United MileagePlus

• Alaska Mileage Plan
• Aeromexico Rewards
• GOL Smiles Argentina and Brazil
• Fidelity Blue
• SAS EuroBonus
• Turkish Miles&Smiles
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
• Virgin Australia Velocity
• Etihad Guest
• JetBlue TrueBlue

“The programs are the starting points: where one accumulates the miles/points. A program can show flights on many airlines due to agreements and alliances with SkyTeam, Star Alliance and Oneworld,” the company explains.

“For example, AwardFares does not yet support the Iberia Plus program, so you cannot search for flights to use those miles on our platform. However, Iberia is part of the Oneworld alliance, which means you can fly with them using miles from other programs that we do support, such as American Airlines AAdvantage or GOL Smiles,” they add.

The traveler has to enter the route or airline and the system searches real time options– Results can be filtered by flight duration, number of stopovers, price or cabin class.

A Timeline allows you to search on different dates at the same time and seating maps can be viewed in real time.

The tool has a free version and two paid levels.

• Free version. Basic access to the platform. It allows you to explore the results in the database and is ideal for those who want to test its use. You have to create an account and you do not need to provide credit card information

• Paid versions: Gold and Diamond. Premium packages expand the number of features with unlimited daily searches, flight schedules, itinerary planner. Ideal for those who already know the tool and know that they will use it frequently. There is a 24-hour free trial for these plans. Gold costs US$9.99 and Diamond costs US$19.99 (in both cases without taxes).