How to read Pointfare's award seat matrix

How it works

1. Start with sample data, or connect your own seats.aero account in Settings with seats.aero's own sign-in (Login with Seats.aero). Pointfare never sees your seats.aero password, and the sign-in tokens stay in your iPhone's Keychain, with iCloud Keychain sync off.
2. Type the routes and dates in English or Chinese, or set them in the editor. Programs, nonstop only and a mileage cap are optional filters; a search asks for business and first unless you choose other cabins.
3. Read the result as a List, a Calendar or a Matrix; compare up to four options and save searches on the device.
4. For an option, Pointfare opens seats.aero's booking link when there is one; otherwise you copy the search. It never books. Confirm on the program's own site before you transfer points.

What the table shows

In the Matrix, rows are the dates and columns the routes. Each cell shows the lowest miles for each cabin you asked for, with the program and the seats left. Miles in different programs are not equivalent.

Each option's card shows the route, the date, the cabin, the miles, the fees, the program, the seats left and how old the data is. Where seats.aero does not give the fees, the card says "Fees not yet confirmed"; where it does not give a seat count, "Seat count not provided"; where it does not give an update time, "Source update time unknown".

An empty line in a cell says why, such as "No matches" or "Not checked to the end".

"No matches" means no matching result was found in the data this search read. It does not prove that no award seats exist.

"Not checked to the end" means the search did not finish reading a route, for example because of a page limit, the daily call limit or an error from seats.aero. Some dates or results may not have been checked.

Limits to know first

• Results are seats.aero's cached availability, not a live search, and each shows how old it is.
• It covers the 26 programs seats.aero lists, where seats.aero monitors the route. An empty result can reflect no matching cached data, a route seats.aero does not monitor, or a search that did not finish reading all results. It does not prove that no award seats exist.
• Searches are one-way: no round trips, multi-city or passenger count.
• The app stops at 950 of seats.aero's 1,000 daily calls and caches results for 45 minutes, so repeating a search costs no calls.
• Route watches check when you open or return to the app. With your own connected data-provider account, route targets can also be checked in the background when iOS allows; iOS decides when, if at all. If a background check finds a route at or below its miles target and notifications are allowed, this iPhone can create a local notification. Pointfare does not send remote push or email alerts. There is no fixed checking frequency and no guaranteed immediate alert when seats open up. Sample-data watches check only when you open or return to the app.
• iPhone only, iOS 18 or later.
• Pointfare depends on seats.aero's Partner API and connects to your seats.aero account through seats.aero's own sign-in (Login with Seats.aero); seats.aero's terms apply to that account.

Route watches

Connection and account-data privacy

When something else suits you better

Pointfare has no live search and no round trips. If you need any of these, a tool built for them will suit you better.

Where this is up to

AwardGrid is free on the App Store (App ID 6816321841). Your own seats.aero data (optional): if you have a seats.aero account with API access (seats.aero decides which accounts have API access; Pointfare sells nothing), you can connect it to see results from that account instead of sample data.

More about Pointfare for iPhone