I had a friend message me the other day to ask if I’d be willing to jump on a call with her to double-check her points research. She was working on finding award flights and was afraid she was missing something and wouldn’t find all the best options.

I happily jumped on a call, and we did some searching, to which she said, “See! This is what I was missing! It’s so nice to see your process.”

So that got me thinking, maybe I should go over the steps I take to find award flights. I already have an award flights article, which gives an overall view of earning the points and booking options. This one is more detailed about finding the actual flights.

Let’s use Paris as an example because who doesn’t love that??

Step One for Finding Award Flights

I always start with Google Flights. This gives me an idea of which airlines fly into the city I’m looking at.

As you can see, there are tons of options into Paris! This isn’t even all of them. But it gives us a starting place. I’m immediately going to take Alaska/Condor out of the equation because I don’t want two stops. So we have British Airways, Delta, Virgin Atlantic, American, and Air France. Not pictured are Aer Lingus and United.

Step Two

Next, I check award search tools to get an idea of prices and best options using points, since Google Flights just gives cash prices.

My favorite search tool is PointsYeah. It’s easy to use, has great filters, and the free version gives a ton of options.

Here’s what I found:

Now that you’ve seen options, you need to think through what you prefer.

• Lower points but higher taxes?
• Mid-range points but very low taxes?
• Layover but fewer points?
• Nonstop but more points?
• Which points do you have available to use?

Step Three

We’re going to use the direct flight booked through and flying on Air France for our example here. Learn more about finding and booking flights through Flying Blue (Air France’s award program) in this blog post.

Next, head to the airline’s website to find the flight and make sure it’s available to book with points.

Enter your search information and choose “book with miles” (you will need to log in). You can leave the departure date blank if you have flexible dates and want to see the full award calendar rather than a specific date.

For this example, we’ll look for the exact flight we found in the example above, which is the 3:15 pm flight from LAX to CDG on October 9th.

We can see that there is confirmed award availability for that flight.

At this point, you could transfer points from any of Flying Blue‘s bank partners (which is all of the banks!) and book your flight.

Step Four

Alternatively, you can cross-check other airlines to confirm you’re getting the best deal. This is also a necessary step if you don’t have points you can use with the flight you found.

So, it’s time to check airline alliances.

Air France is part of Oneworld alliance, so we’re going to check some of their partners — in this case, Delta and Virgin Atlantic.

When we look at Virgin Atlantic, we can see the two options that we found above on PointsYeah.

The first one is a direct flight with Air France for 15,000 points and $163 in taxes.

The second one has a layover in London. The first leg is on Virgin Atlantic and the second leg is on Air France. That one is 13,000 points and $129 in taxes.

If your goal is fewer points and you’re willing to have a layover, that second option may be better than booking through Air France for 25,000 points and $103 in taxes.

Let’s check Delta.

The same exact flight isn’t available to book with Delta. There is a different Air France flight for 102,000 miles (YUCK), or a Delta-operated flight for 90,000 miles (also yuck). So in this case, Delta is not a viable option.

Step Five

Now we book our trip!

We have to decide which of our options we like best. Do we want to book directly with Air France for more points, slightly lower taxes, and a nonstop flight?

Or do we want to book through Virgin Atlantic for fewer points, slightly higher taxes, and possible a layover.

There isn’t a wrong answer here! You have to decide what works best for you, your preferences, and the points you have available.

Wrapping Up

This process becomes easier and faster the more you do it. It’s more steps than booking cash flights, but the juice is worth the squeeze when you can book a flight for anywhere from $5 to a few hundred dollars tops, instead of many hundreds or thousands of dollars!