Step 1

Find Your Routes on Flight Connections

The very first place to start is FlightConnections.com. It shows the nonstop routes between destinations, and you can filter by airline.

You don't need the paid version for this!

Once you know your routes, you can immediately focus in on certain parts of the search.

Just because a flight exists doesn't mean it's always possible or practical to book it with points — but it's still good to know what your best possible routes are. You might also see that you can fly nonstop on a Sunday but not a Tuesday, which helps you decide which days to search.

At a smaller airport, you might not have many nonstop routes. That's okay — you'll still see which airline hubs your airport can easily get you to. And occasionally you'll be surprised by a nonstop you didn't know about.

Step 2

Gauge Cash Prices on Google Flights

Once you've noted the nonstop routes (or other routings) that interest you, go to Google Flights. It's really important to gauge the cash prices for your flights.

Cash prices are volatile, and sales are somewhat unpredictable — but also common. You can even set Google Flights to track cash prices on your route in case they drop way down.

Google Flights also lets you filter for nonstops, so it's a good second check that you haven't missed any nonstop routes.

Before You Search

Some Outdated Advice to Ignore

This is not a blanket rule anymore. It is still true for some routes.

Many airlines now use dynamic pricing for award flights. They don't open the schedule a year out and earmark a handful of seats — say five — to be booked with points. Airlines are trying to maximize revenue on both cash and award flights, so deals pop up throughout the year.

Searching early still helps, simply because it gives you more time to find a deal. If there's a trip you're really trying to take at a peak time like spring break or Christmas, it can help to start searching a year in advance, or even a little before, to keep tabs on what's out there. But you might never see a really cheap price for peak seasons.

Step 3

Match Sweet Spots to Your Points and Routes

Domestic flights have different sweet spots than, say, flights from the U.S. to Europe. We do our best to consolidate and track them all on the website, with detailed guides to booking flights to every major region of the world. (If we don't have one yet, it's on our research list.) We do the tedious legwork of comparing all the different options and boil it down to sweet spots.

So after cash prices and Google Flights, the third place to go is our flight guide for the region you're flying to. Look for the sweet spots that overlap with the points you have or the routes you want.

For domestic flights, keep two more things in mind:

• Nonstop vs. connecting. The sweet spots are sometimes different for each — another reason to know your options from Step 1.
• Flight length. Some sweet spots are specifically for shorter-distance routes.

Step 4

Search for Actual Award Seats

Now you take what you've gathered and start searching for actual available award seats. A lot of people want to skip straight here, to a points search site like PointsYeah, or seats.aero. These search a lot of award programs at once and can be very efficient.

But if you go straight to them without understanding sweet spots, you'll miss some of the best opportunities to maximize your points. They're great tools — but only if you know how to use them. Not just how to navigate and sort, but how to use the information they give you.

The good news: if you've done all the legwork in Steps 1–3, the actual searching becomes a lot easier.

There's No Perfect Deal

A lot of people in the points world overemphasize certain ways to value a deal — usually by calculating cents per point. People like to brag about what their ticket cost in points versus what that exact flight would have cost in cash. But most of the time, that isn't a fair or helpful comparison.

There are pros and cons to every method. That's why you have to know yourself and what you value. Your measure of success might be:

• Getting to a specific place on a specific date using the fewest points
• Searching flexible dates to find any time you can go nonstop
• Having a flexible cancellation policy — even if it costs more points
• Not caring about the destination, just finding the cheapest random route