How to Use AwardLogic Like a Pro

AwardLogic is a tool designed to help frequent flyers find and book flights. The subscription-based service comes with a suite of unique features and filters, and can be very beneficial to help you find the best award flights quickly.

In this guide, we’ll explore how AwardLogic can help you choose which points to use for flight bookings and find availability across multiple loyalty programs in a single search. We’ll also dive into its many features, and see how it stacks up against other booking tools.

AwardLogic Pricing

While you can technically use AwardLogic for free without having to create an account, all the information you’d actually want to see remains hidden from view.

Therefore, to actually make use of AwardLogic’s features, you have to sign up for an account and choose one of three pricing options:

• $4.99 (USD) for a single day pass
• $19.99 (USD) for the monthly plan
• $199.99 (USD) for the annual plan

The annual plan works out to an average of $16.67 (USD) per month. If you sign up for a monthly plan, you get the first three days for free.

Every plan gives you access to all of the services, with the exception of the single day pass, which doesn’t include flight alerts.

If you’d like, you could also get some friends together and split a membership to help cut down the cost.

For most users, paying $4.99 (USD) for a day pass would probably suffice, as you can spend a day sorting out your flights and then get instructions on how to book them. 

The monthly and annual plans could make sense to get if you can benefit from flight alerts or if you tend to conduct a high volume of searches throughout the week. 

AwardLogic Features – Award Flight Searches

AwardLogic’s main function is an airline search tool which lets you easily view and compare the number of points required for a specific route across multiple airline loyalty programs.

By comparing multiple programs at once, you can save a lot of time, and also better optimize your booking by knowing the best program to book with.

Furthermore, you can specify which loyalty programs you want included in your search, and filter the search results to only show the points required for those programs.

This is very useful, as you may have a lot of Aeroplan points and British Airways Avios at your disposal, but you don’t really need to know how many points would be required from, say, the Thai Airways Royal Orchid program.

Searching for Award Flights

Suppose you have a tidy sum of Aeroplan points, Delta SkyMiles, and American Airlines AAdvantage miles at your disposal, and you wish to see what the best options are for a one-way flight from Vancouver to New York on March 15, 2023.

First, you input your desired origin, destination, travel date, number of passengers, and class of service. After that, select “Advanced options”, and check which loyalty programs you would like to include in your search.

For this example, we will make sure to check Aeroplan, Delta SkyMiles, and AAdvantage miles.

The following screen shows you the search results.

As you can see, the two best options for Vancouver to New York on March 15, 2023, are either redeeming 10,000 Delta SkyMiles, plus an estimated $51.62 (USD) in taxes and fees, or redeeming 12,000 Aeroplan points plus an estimated $70.69 (USD) in taxes and fees.

The number of checked and carry-on bags are also displayed in the results, which is a nice piece of information to have readily accessible.

If you select the Delta flights with SkyMiles, AwardLogic lays out the instructions for booking from start to finish. It also displays the programs from which you can transfer points to Delta SkyMiles, should you not have enough already in your account.

It’s important to note that while the instructions tell you to call the program to book, you can just as easily book via the loyalty program’s website instead. You might also avoid paying a booking fee this way, which isn’t mentioned in the instructions.

Of course, the best practice would be to corroborate the results from AwardLogic with the actual program before you make any transfers, which is also suggested on the page.

AwardLogic also gives you the option of having them make the booking on your behalf for an additional fee of $99.99 (USD) per booking.

This option could make sense if you’re looking at a more complex booking that requires you to phone in, but for a simple booking like our Vancouver to New York example, you’d save both time and money by just logging into your SkyMiles account and booking it yourself.

Keep in mind that using AwardLogic to search for Aeroplan flights won’t include any discounts you would receive through Aeroplan’s preferred pricing. Instead, you’d have to sign in to your Aeroplan account to see if you’d be eligible for a lower price than what AwardLogic is showing.

Search Multiple Dates

Another very handy function of AwardLogic’s search tool is the ability to search for multiple dates at once. While it’s limited to your desired date plus up to two extra days, it’s still nice to be able to search more than just one day at a time, which is the case on most loyalty programs’ websites.

To search multiple dates, simply select “+ 1 Day” or “+ 2 Days” when you’re selecting a date.

You search results will then display results for the date you selected and the next two days, and the date is displayed on the right of each search result.

Using Filters for Search Results

You can also choose to have the results ordered by the “Cheapest by price”, “Quickest by time”, or “Earliest by departure time”. Simply click on a tab to see the results ordered in the way that you’d like.

For example, if we select the “Quickest by time” tab, we see the direct flights from Vancouver to New York (EWR) on each of the three days show up at the top of the search results.

For another example, let’s look at someone who is looking to fly from Montreal to Prague in business class in late March 2023.

We’re looking to spend the least amount of points, so we select the “Cheapest by price” tab for our results. Without touching any of the filters on the side, we get the following results.

Initially, we see three results on the same day for a similar cost in points. However, upon closer inspection, the third result is only 15% business class, which isn’t ideal.

Under the filters, we can slide the “% of class” filter over to any percentage. When it’s set to show a minimum of 80% in business class, the results automatically refresh, and we get the following:

On the left side of the search results, you’ll find a number of other filters that you can use to narrow down the search results to show only what you’d like to see.

You can filter the results by the number of miles/points, % of class, points programs, number of stops, class of service, time of day, airlines, and duration.

Next to each option within the “Stops”, “Class”, “Time”, and “Airlines” filters, you’ll also see the price in points required for each option. This allows you to easily see the pros and cons of the available flights within each parameter.

Of these, we can now see that the best option is clearly to book the KLM flights via Amsterdam. If you look closely, you’ll see that the results state that there are seven more ways to book, aside from using Chase Ultimate Rewards as suggested in the search result.

Clicking on the “View” button, it displays the additional options to book, as well as the cost of doing so with each program.

In this situation, there’s no advantage to booking with one program over another, so you’d simply go with any of the available options that make the most sense to you.

Other Considerations

On AwardLogic, you can search for one-way, round-trip, and multi-city routes. However, keep in mind that the multi-city search option only allows you to search two different routes, and it seems to just price it out as two separate one-ways.

In the future, it would be great to see the multi-day search function extended past three days. Other search tools can go much higher than that, allowing you to search for seven days or more, depending on the website.

Furthermore, it would be beneficial to be able to run more complex routings through the multi-city search function. Right now, it seems as though a multi-city search is no different than searching for two one-ways.

There are certain airline programs that have benefits if you book multi-city with them. For example, Aeroplan allows you to book a stopover for only 5,000 Aeroplan points, and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan bookings permit a free stopover on select routes and only with select airlines.

This means you’ll have to use Air Canada’s search function if you want to take advantage of Aeroplan’s 5,000-point stopover rule on multi-city routes, and likewise with Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.

AwardLogic Features – Flight Alerts

Once you’ve signed up and paid for a membership, you’ll also have access to flight alerts. With this function, AwardLogic will notify you via email as soon as a specific route becomes available to book with points.

After you input your desired route, date, number of passengers, and class of service, you have the option of including which airlines’ loyalty programs you wish to have searched. If you want to be very specific, you can select one airline, and you can even input the specific flight number you’re looking for.

The flight alerts are best used for business class or First Class on airlines that tend to release these seats to award partners periodically before the departure date.

For example, if you’d like to fly Japan Airlines First Class, and you also know that unsold First Class seats are often released within two weeks of departure, you could set up a flight alert that will notify you if and when a seat becomes available.

By setting up a flight alert, you can also make sure that you’re one of the first to snag one of the hard-to-book, highly coveted business class or First Class flights.

Another great use of flight alerts is for highly sought after award flights. For example, a “Saver” award flight on Singapore Airlines Suites Class is very difficult to come by, even when searching a year in advance.

By setting up a flight alert, you’ll instantly know if one becomes available, and you can then pounce on the opportunity before someone else does.

Although you’re only able to set up a flight alert for one specific day, you’re allowed to have up to 25 flight alerts active at any given time. This makes it possible to set up an alert for multiple days for the same flight, or to set alerts on multiple routings, which could be useful for something like Lufthansa First Class.

AwardLogic Features – Multiple Markets

Once you create an account, you have the option of choosing from which “market” you want to base your searches. Currently, you can select to have the US, the United Kingdom, or Australia as available markets.

When it comes to using airline loyalty programs, it doesn’t matter which market you select, as a program like Aeroplan will have the same redemption rates no matter which market you’re in. This is true for every airline’s loyalty program.

However, this is a useful feature when you’re looking at specific credit card programs with points that can be transferred to other loyalty programs.

For example, American Express US Membership Rewards have a significantly different transfer ratio to various airline loyalty programs than Australia’s American Express Membership Rewards.

Moreover, by selecting Australia or United Kingdom, you’ll be able to see banks specific to those markets, giving you more transfer options.

The most beneficial feature AwardLogic could add for Canadians would be a Canadian market alongside the US, British, and Australian markets already available.

For Canadians, AwardLogic could include Canadian American Express Membership Rewards transfer partners, as well as other Canadian-specific points currencies, such as RBC Avion and HSBC Rewards.

AwardLogic Features – Hotels

AwardLogic also has a hotel search function; however, it only includes cash rates, and you won’t be able to see which points can be used to book hotels. Indeed, this feature seems to be no different than any other online hotel booking tool.

We’d love to see AwardLogic incorporate hotel loyalty program booking options in a future iteration of the search tool, similar to what is set up for award flights.

It’d be great to easily compare all of the options for, say, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards, and so forth, all on one page for any given city.

For now, though, there isn’t anything particularly special about AwardLogic’s hotel search function that you couldn’t find in a free service.

How Does AwardLogic Compare with Other Booking Tools?

When considering the price, AwardLogic is on the more expensive side compared to similar subscription-based services. For example, an annual subscription with ExpertFlyer is half the price, and there’s a fair bit more you can do with ExpertFlyer than you can’t do with AwardLogic.

However, keep in mind, that ExpertFlyer is best used once you already have a specific flight and routing in mind. AwardLogic’s strength lies in its ability to search multiple booking options across a variety of loyalty programs in one go, whereas you’d need to conduct multiple individual searches on ExpertFlyer to accomplish the same feat.

Furthermore, AwardLogic clearly displays the costs of booking flights across multiple programs, which lets you easily compare and contrast the different programs. ExpertFlyer doesn’t give any costs, and rather just tells you if an award seat is available or not.

Another strength of AwardLogic is that it is much more user friendly and easier to navigate than other options out there. There’s not much of a learning curve required to figure out the system, which is great if you’re not particularly tech-savvy.

Lastly, you also have the option to have someone book everything for you, albeit for an additional fee, in the event you don’t want to put in the effort yourself.

Is AwardLogic Worth It?

AwardLogic is best suited to anyone with high points balances across multiple loyalty programs. If you only have, say, Aeroplan points, then you wouldn’t get much value out of AwardLogic, as you could simply just use Aeroplan’s search tool instead for free.

However, if you have Aeroplan points, British Airways Avios, Alaska miles, and a healthy balance in your American Express US Membership Rewards account, then AwardLogic could certainly be a useful tool. With a single search, you could quickly decide from which program to draw your points, or where you could transfer your US Amex MR in order to get the best deal available.

The flight alert function is another very useful feature of AwardLogic, especially if you have a specific routing in mind that’s not available when you want it.

Being the first to know when an award seat becomes available may be your only chance of booking a bucket-list First Class flight, and by setting a flight alert, you won’t have to spend time conducting multiple searches every day.

Conclusion

AwardLogic is a useful resource for looking up flights if you have points balances across multiple loyalty programs.

It’s a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate search tool that has ability to create flight alerts, too. This can save you hours that you might otherwise spend searching through multiple programs, with countless tabs open in your browser.

The price point could be a bit on the high side if you only fly a few times a year, but the cost could be justified if you fly often on award bookings.