Hey friends,
If you're still using Qantas or Velocity’s own website to search for reward seats, then you have been doing it all wrong!
Today, I wanted to share with you 3 tools I’ve been using over the past few months to help you easily search for and book business class reward seats.
All three tools I’ll cover today have free versions you can test, but to unlock all the best features, you’ll want to go for a premium plan.
1. FlightSeats.io
FlightSeats.io is the newest tool that I’ve come across and its a no-frills tool that is great for searching for reward seats up to 1 year in advance across tons of different routes.
The tool allows you to easily search for Qantas Classic Rewards and Velocity Reward Seats (and their partners).
Free Plan: Search for one reward seat up to 120 days in advance and set one alert per month.
Paid Plan ($15/month): Search up to 353 days ahead, set up to 20 concurrent seat alerts, and more advanced features like seat map and flight loads.
I love the simple interface and the ability to see flights in both chart view (for a holistic view, which is shown below) and table view (for more detailed info). Plus, there are handy filters, including an option to avoid Qantas’s Classic Plus fares.
Plus, it offers a cool seat map feature to see which seats are free for a particular flight and a Flight Load feature that shows the number of seats still available in a flight to help you determine how much you should bid for upgrades.
2. Seats.Aero
Seats.Aero is another fantastic option and has been around for a while. The tool currently allows you to search for reward seats across 19 different airlines.
Whilst a lot of these airlines won’t be relevant for us Australians, you can still search for reward flights with Qantas, Velcity, Emirates, Etihad and Singapore Airlines! Which is the most comprehensive across all 3 tools that I’ll talk about today.
Free Plan: Search up to 2 months ahead and create unlimited seat alerts.
Pro Plan ($14/month): Search up to a year in advance, set SMS alerts, and unlock advanced filters.
The tool has an Explore feature (shown below) which shows all the available rewrad flights for a particular airline. Look at all of the business class flights available to be booked for flights departing from Melbourne to Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Alternatively, you can also search for reward seats normally based on a specific origin, destination and date range (this is how I usually search for them)
Pro-tip is to look for flights that have been last seen more recently, this way you know it’ll still be available to book!
3. SeatFinder.Tech
SeatsFinder.Tech helps you find reward seats across Qantas and Velocity, and it lets you search up to 1 year in advance—even on the free plan.
Free Plan: Search up to 1 year ahead, but limited to +1 week date flexibility and no seat alerts.
Premium Plan ($20/month): Access advanced filters, create up to 5 seat alerts, and more.
In terms of other features and functionality, SeatsFinder is probably the most lite on, only having the ability to create seat alerts if you’re a premium user and also providing a Points Booking Concierge Service which would come at a cost.
💠My Thoughts
Each tool has its own pros and cons. In my opinion, upgrading to a premium plan for any of these tools is worth it, as it will likely save you hours searching for them without it.
Remember that will all of these tools, there’s no lock-in period so you can upgrade for a month, find your reward seats and then just cancel!
But if you’re really against upgrading to a premium plan (which I totally understand!) then in fact I’d recommend using the free plan with a combination of all three tools.
SeatsFinder to search for award seats if you’re looking to book your flights well in advance, use Seats.Aero to create an unlimited number of flight alerts and then Flightseats as a back-up or to look up seat maps / flight loads.
💳 Credit Card Offers
Bank of Melbourne Amplify Platinum Card - 100,000 Amplify Platinum points when you spend $3,000 in the first 90 days and a $0 annual fee if you’re already a customer with Bank of Melbourne (usually $124).
100,000 Amplify platinum points equate to 50,000 Velocity points. Pretty awesome deal for a $0 annual fee!
Note - You won’t be eligible if you’ve held another Bank of Melbourne, St.George or BankSA rewards card in the last 24 months.
Note - Any credit card offers and promotions that I share are not affiliate links and I am not associated with the credit providers in anyway.
💸 My Favourite Finance Apps That I Use
These are all the investing/finance apps that I use on a day-to-day basis.
Sharesight - Save 4 months when you upgrade to an annual premium plan
UBank - 5.5% p.a. high-interest savings account. Earn $30 when using code Y1CT9P2
ING - 5.5% p.a. high-interest savings account. Earn $125 when using code Jbn574
Note - The above finance app are affiliate links and I will earn a commission, however, it comes at no additional cost to you and helps support me as a creator.
🎬 My Recent Video
3 Secret Tools To Book Qantas/Velocity Business Class Flights - If you’d prefer a video walkthrough of the tools I’ve talked about in this week’s newsletter, check out my latest video!
Seatfinder is rubbish and they are engage in all sorts of dodgy promotion and fake reviews.