Searching for award flights with your favourite airline frequent flyer programs can be daunting task, not to mention a potentially very time consuming one. Whether you are a beginner or consider yourself a pro with points and miles, the time it can take to find award flights. Over the years various online tools have come along to help ease that task and the latest is point.me, which happens to be he reincarnation of Juicy Miles and they are on a mission to be the best award search engine and service out there.
Point.me is a pay for play service that offers daily, monthly and yearly passes to access their powerful award search engine. The prices are reasonable and with the three options it provides perfect access for the once a year or less redeemer and the multiple times per month redeemer. Prices range from US$5 to US$129 however you can save on those rates as Rewards Canada has teamed up with point.me to offer our readers a special discount to try them out.
Special Offer for Rewards Canada Readers:
When you use our exclusive promo code RWRDSCA you can choose to receive your first month point.me membership for only US$1 or you can choose a yearly membership and receive 20% off the annual price.
To use the promo code you will need to choose the Standard Plan,
select either Monthly or Yearly, and then enter the promo code RWRDSCA. This
will let you have your first month for $1 when choosing Monthly, or
save a total of 20% when you select Yearly billing. Prices are in USD.
This offer is only available for sign ups until May 31, 2022. You can sign up with point.me here.
The Standard Plan costs US$12 per month if you choose the monthly rate or if you choose yearly is US$129. With our code you get that first month for $1 (and you cancel if you like before the next month is billed) or if you choose yearly you would end up paying US$103.20 in the first year. (Be sure to use a No FX fee card if you have one!)
If you don't want to commit to either a monthly or yearly standard plan point.me does have a Day Pass plan where you pay US$5 for 24 hours of access. Since our promo code gives you a month for US$1 you'd want to use that first and then afterwards go the Day Pass route if you know you will only be a casual user of the site.
Need more time than a day to conduct your searches then a Monthly Pass may be your best route, at $12 for one month (well $1 for your first month) it could be all you need to find the flights at the right miles or points price for you and it gives you the time to conduct multiple searches over multiple days to find the right award flights.
An annual pass can really make sense if you are redeeming points and miles for flights on a regular basis
How point.me works
point.me works like every other flight search engine. Simply input your departure city, destination, dates, class of travel and number of passengers and off you go!
Once you click the search button the site goes to work - the results can take a few minutes to display as they are going out and checking all the sites you would have to but point.me does it much faster than if you did it on your own. You'll see the following while it searches:
And as soon as results start coming in it populate in the page but I recommend waiting until the entire search is done which actually can take a little longer than the above progress bubble denotes. I thought a search was done when the bubble disappeared so started taking screenshots for this post, left the page and went back a minute or two after and there were more results that showed up (and they were even better). Here are what the results will look like, I searched Toronto to Paris CDG in October:
The site defaults to show the quickest flights but you can select other options including Points Low to High and "points.me picks" which takes into account points and taxes fees and several other factors. The above result was the standard which shows Air Canada and Air France as the quickest flights but you can see that Air France KLM's Flying Blue is the better option at 60,000 Flying Miles instead of Aeroplan's 141,600 points - even with the higher taxes and fees.
For us Canadians we need to look at the points or miles listed beside the actual frequent flyer program name and not the the larger bolded amount as point.me is showing the best transfer options for U.S. cards (more on that in the next section)
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| You want to pay attention to these amounts |
It doesn't stop there however - as I already mentioned the first screen shot of search results were based on quickest time and they also show the obvious programs most people would look at for that route but then switch it to Points Low to High and you get the following:
I don't think a lot of people would consider routing via Warsaw to get to Paris nor using Asiana Club. In terms of converting points, Asiana Club Miles are only available via Marriott Bonvoy and Best Western Rewards which means the following Canadian cards could get you this flight:
American Express Cobalt Card (C$1 = 1.2 to 6 Marriott Points = 0.4 to 2.5 Club Miles)
American Express Gold Rewards Card (C$1 = 1.2 to 2.4 Marriott Bonvoy Points = 0.4 to 0.8 Club Miles)
American Express Green Card (C$1 = 1.2 Marriott Bonvoy Points = 0.4 Club Miles)
Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express®* Card (C$1 = 0.67 to 2.08
Club Miles)
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Best Western Rewards Mastercard (C$1=
0.20 to 1 Club Mile)
The Platinum Card from American Express (C$1 = 1.2 to 3.6 Marriott Bonvoy Points = 0.4 to 1.5 Club Miles)
That's not a bad deal especially if you have the Cobalt Card and make most of your spending at the 5x points level - it would only take $16,000 spend to get the Asiana redemption. That being said the same $16,000 in spend would also get you the direct flight on Air France (80,000 MR points = 60,000 Flying Blue Miles) so I know which I would take. But, I think what this example shows is the potential point.me has to help you find award flights you would perhaps not consider when you search on your own and in that regard I would even consider it an educational tool to learn more about the different program, partners and how to best use them.
How do I find Canadian transfer options
As Point.me is a U.S. based company the features of transfer options and transfer bonuses they provide are for the U.S. market only. As the examples above show, as a Canadian you can still use it as a powerful award search engine but to find transfer options you'll need to tie in other tools. I would start with Rewards Canada's Airline & Hotel loyalty programs that you can earn miles or points in with Canadian Credit Cards to see which cards you can use to make those transfers. Open that feature of ours in a new tab so that you can switch back and forth between point.me and our list.
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| Screenshot of Rewards Canada's Airline & Hotel loyalty programs that you can earn miles or points in with Canadian Credit Cards |
At the highest level these will be the credit card programs you'd be using the most:
- American Express Membership Rewards (Air Canada, Air France, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Delta, Etihad, KLM)
- HSBC Rewards (British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer)
- Marriott Bonvoy (40+ airlines)
- RBC Rewards (American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, WestJet)
- Diners Club Club Rewards* (Alaska
Airlines, American, British Airways, Delta, El Al, Hawaiian Airlines,
Icelandair, South African Airways, Southwest, Thai Airways, Virgin
Atlantic)
* - Diners Club is closed to new applicants, we have listed it for those who do hold the card
I think most Canadian will definitely find point.me more useful for transborder flights from Canada, international flights from Canada and for flights that are wholly outside of Canada. The reason why is that with domestic flights you're pretty much going to just be searching Aeroplan but don't count out point.me as they will show you options with other Star Alliance airlines where the points/miles amount may actually be less. Case in point, here's a random date for Vancouver to Toronto in Business Class:
Miles & More comes in as the lowest points option (7,900 points lower than Aeroplan) but we all know how hard it is for Canadians to earn Miles & More miles... but I think you get the point.
Connect your Award Wallet Account
If
you want to know your actual points balances as you search with
points.me you can connect it with your Award Wallet account and it will
pull your balances and elite statues and show them on their site. You
can sign up with Award Wallet here if you don't have an account with them yet.
Booking your flights
Once you have found flights that meet your needs you will need to book your flights with the end program. So in all of the examples above that would be Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Asiana Club or Miles & More for that domestic flight.
You can also have point.me do the booking for you as they have the point.me concierge service where they will handle the entire booking process for you. The current rate for that service is US$200 per passenger.
Wrapping it up
So what do we think of point.me? Is it a one stop award search shop that is perfect? No, but I don't know of any of the options out there that are. I do know it has the potential to save a lot of time when searching for award flights and for me that's a big win. Ultimately I would consider it one more tool in your toolbox of apps, websites and
strategies for finding award flight availability. Using point.me in combination with other techniques you have learned or become accustomed to can be a great way to find the flights that are best suited for you in terms of pricing, dates, routing and program(s) to utilize.
Remember to use promo code RWRDSCA to receive your first Monthly Pass for only US$1 or 20% off an Annual Pass.
Click here to learn more and sign up with point.me
Rewards Canada is an affiliate partner of point.me and may receive compensation for successful membership sign ups completed with our links.
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