the Jebba Journal: Seventh Edition

A very in-depth guide on how to find flights using points (best viewed on a computer)

Okay so you have some points saved up from your credit card and want to use them to travel. Because you read the Jebba Journal, you know transferring points to airlines will often provide the best value. But how do you find flights for a reasonable amount of points? Well friend, you’re in luck! Today I’ll go in detail on two options, one that is best for very specific search parameters, and another that is more advanced, but provides a lot more data.

**Pssstt, this newsletter has a lot of screenshots which will likely appear very small if viewed on a phone. I suggest using your computer if you want to see the images better.**

As always, this newsletter is supported by friends like you. If you would like to further support me, please share with friends & family, or consider upgrading your subscription to a paid membership, which includes more 1-on-1 advice! (To upgrade to paid, click the link below to change your subscription type).

Before we get into it, I want to share some resources on how to actually transfer points from your credit card to an airline (or hotel for that matter). Rather than spend pages explaining this myself, I’ve linked articles here for Capital One Miles, Citi ThankYou Points, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and American Express Membership Rewards.

PointsYeah

PointsYeah is fantastic tool when you have an exact route and date in mind for a flight. Their interface is user friendly, provides real-time results, and offers basic features for free. Unlike Google Flights however, it is recommended to search for two, one-way flights when using points instead of booking the itinerary as a round-trip ticket.

After you create an account (required to use their website), simply just search the route and the date you have in mind. In a matter of seconds it will show all available flights on that route, the time of the flight, how many points it will cost to book, and which airline program to book through.

Remember, you can sometimes book award flights through airline partners rather than the airline you will actually be flying. This is how I used points on British Airways to fly to Palm Springs on a flight operated by Alaska Airlines, as discussed in my last newsletter.

Let’s say you live in San Francisco but want to visit your family in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving. Type your parameters in the search bar and hit the “Yeah!” button.

Here are the first three results out of the 98 total that were generated. The first two results are the same flight, Delta flight 2841 leaving at 6:00 AM, but the first option costs 500 points less. This is because you have the option to book this flight using Virgin Atlantic points instead of directly through Delta.

Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner of Capital One, Citi, Chase, and Amex, so in this case you don’t actually need Delta points to book this flight. If you do have Delta points however, you can see from the second option on the search results that the flight is only 8,000 Delta points.

PointsYeah even offers Points Price Alerts, to set up tracking of specific routes which will alert you if the price drops to a set threshold. I haven’t used this feature yet, be plan to whenever I next go on a trip.

Their website is pretty straight forward and works similarly to any other travel search engine, the only difference is the added complication of using points, potentially through airline partners.

Take some time to mess around with their website to get a feel for it. Search potential destinations you want to visit on random dates in the future to see how to get there using points.

Just for fun, I looked up flying from New York City to London the day before Thanksgiving (because nothing screams “America!” like going to England for Thanksgiving). I was surprised to see tons of non-stop flights on Virgin Atlantic for only 10,000 points and $150 in taxes and fees! Just don’t forget to also search separately for your return flight home before you make any bookings.

Seats.aero

Seats.aero is a slightly more advanced, albeit amazing search engine. I view PointsYeah as the ultimate tool when you have a set route and timeframe in mind, the “I have to travel for a wedding on this date, how do I get there using points?” scenario. I am going into a lot of detail here, but I promise once you actually go to the site and mess around with it, it becomes a lot less daunting than I make it seem.

Seats.aero is perfect when you have the flexibility, or if you’re like me and just want to see where your points can potentially take you. It will (for the most part) only show flights that are available for the lowest possible price rather than every available flight, regardless of cost. You absolutely can search a specific route, but also what’s available across an entire airline program globally, or from specific continents.

They only show what’s available over the next few months in time, so this is best used for somewhat last minute travel. I personally use it to see the cheapest options to fly between two destinations, getting a baseline price for future trips I may want to take while daydreaming at work.

Thanks to Seats.aero, I can pretend I’m in a position to use 60,000 American Airlines points to fly tomorrow to Tokyo from SFO in business class on Japan Airlines, a flight that costs around $8,000. Maybe one day I’ll actually do this, but for now it’s enough just knowing that this is even possible.

For a more realistic example, let’s look at trying to go to Europe without a set destination in mind. After all, inter-European flights are fairly cheap so let’s focus on just getting there.

Simply go to their website, click “Explore” from the dropdown menu, and select which airline program you would like to search from (note you may not actually fly on that airline thanks to airline partnerships, as discussed earlier). It will even show you which credit card programs transfer to each airline.

For the sake of breadth, let’s take a look at Air France/KLM Flying Blue since you can transfer points to them from every major points card. Once you click on the airline, it will automatically bring up every flight in inventory that is the bottom of the barrel price, organized by date. The points prices listed in green are direct flights, blue signifies a flight with a layover (sorry to anyone that is blue/green colorblind).

Here are the results, which you can see are somewhat chaotic since by default it shows what’s available across the globe. I personally am not interested in a flight from London Heathrow (LHR) to Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi (DEL). So, I filter the flights by changing the “Show flights from and to” dropdowns and then filter further by using the “Search:” bar off to the right to look up a specific airport.

If you want to search flights from San Francisco to anywhere in Europe bookable using KLM / Air France points, you can change the parameters from North America to Europe, then type in SFO on the “Search:” bar (where I’ve placed the red arrows below).

Now we are cooking! This shows much more applicable routes, like San Francisco (SFO) to Amsterdam (AMS) on 8/20 for only 40,000 points in Premium Economy (a flight I have actually taken) or from SFO to Pairs (CDG) on 8/20 and 8/21 for 20,000 points in Economy, or 80,000 points in business class. All of these are the lowest price you will ever see for these routes and classes for non-stop flights. When you want to look at what it will cost for a return flight, simply reverse the search parameters.

To save space on this newsletter, I can only show the first few results via screenshot but the website actually shows availability through the next two months. This is why Seats.aero is great if you have flexibility. It will show dozens of available dates on one screen, rather than requiring you to search within a maximum 3-day period like PointsYeah.

Utilizing Seats.aero to the fullest extent

To really get more advanced, you need a better grasp of airline partnerships. For example, if I want to fly United using United points, I would need to transfer points from Chase (or BILT), the only credit card transfer partners for United. The problem is, I don’t have a ton of Chase points right now to transfer therefore I can’t book using United points.

I do however have over 200,000 Amex points. Air Canada is a partner airline of United, so I can transfer my Amex points to Air Canada Aeroplan and book a United flight, when available.

I know that United flies directly to Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia from SFO, mostly from fucking around on this website for fun. If I wanted to see which of these routes are available to book via Air Canada using my Amex points, Seats.aero makes it easy.

I select “Air Canada Aeroplan” from the Explore dropdown, then plug in “North America,” “Oceania,” and “SFO” to filter my results and the search engine does the rest.

I scrolled to the end of the search results and see there are plenty of options on 10/14 and 10/15 to go non-stop in economy to either Melbourne (MEL), Auckland (AKL), Tahiti (PPL), and Brisbane (BNE). All for between 35,000 and 50,000 Air Canada points. You can click on the little information box off to the right of each route to see the specific flight details, like what airline you will be flying and the cost of the taxes/fees.

This is also useful for domestic flights, albeit the results may be somewhat more limited because they do not search every airport in existence. Still, it is cool to know that if I wanted to, I could fly from Seattle to New York for as little as 12,500 points each way, or from San Francisco to Honolulu for the same price.

My advice to you is to go on the website and go through every airline program on the “Explore” dropdown. Filter the results based on continents, like North America to Europe, Asia, etc, and just see what’s possible from your home airport. I think you’ll be surprised to learn where you can go with a somewhat moderate amount of points.

Be sure to leave me a comment on where you want to go using points, or if you need any more help utilizing these websites!