Credit card reward maximization requires attention to detail at every step along the way. Maybe you're already a pro at collecting points, you know when to get which SUBs, how to work referrals, and how to squeeze every point per dollar you can from your purchases. But how good are you at maximizing redemptions?
This is the second in my series on reward search tools, check out my previous article on Roame or my more general article about maximizing redemptions in which I use Seats.Aero to get some foundational knowledge of why you should consider a flight search tool. If you're new to redeeming, consider signing up for our free intro session.
Referrals and disclaimers at the bottom. Note that I do not have any discount codes or referral links to RFF, but they did provide me with one month free of their service to review it - they have no editorial input over this article.
British Airways
If you collect RBC Avion points you may be aware that they have regular transfer bonuses to British Airways Avios (most recently was one that ended Nov 12th 2024). Furthermore, my favourite earner card the Amex Cobalt transfers 1:1 as well. This makes BA an appealing potential target for your points. Unfortunately as I've highlighted in my other articles on reward searching, many search tools lack the ability to directly search BA's availability. There are some workarounds such as searching AA and Alaska availability and then cross referencing it to BA, but this requires knowledge of the partners that are shared across the networks and the booking rules of each (for example BA does not partner with Starlux unlike Alaska).
With that in mind I sought out BA focused tools to see if they could provide additional value. So far I have found Reward Flight Finder and Seatspy (which I will review separately) and I'm waiting to hear back from Expert Flyer.
Reward Flight Finder
Targeted at people living in the UK, Reward Flight Finder works exclusively with British Airways. They offer a free Bronze tier that gives a year of searching and two paid tiers; the higher of which gives up to 20 instant alerts while the midtier only allows 5 alerts and they are somewhat delayed.
Once you're logged in and set up, it's as simple as picking an airport pairing and you're presented with a highly visible calendar view in two columns, one for each direction of flight. The coloured ring segments indicate the available class, and the shaded in center circle highlights off-peak pricing.
Hovering over a day gives the breakdown of the availability
Clicking through conveniently indicates the aircraft type, flight times, and gives a link to book on BA.
This might strike you as super straight forward and powerful, and I'm inclined to agree, but there are some massive limitations to work with here.
Limitations
Firstly, only BA operated flights are provided here, this is a double whammy as it means that you are not only missing out on transfer partners from BA Avios (ex. Qatar), but you are also missing out on partner reward availability that can be booked through BA (ex. JAL).
Secondly, their system only supports direct flights. That means as a Canadian you're limited to viewing routings to LHR (or LGW from YVR) with its notoriously high fees particularly in business class.
That's not to say that there is no potential utility here.
Working Around the Limits
Lets say you want to go from Toronto to Istanbul in June, you can search for availability of each leg on RFF.
First YYZ-LHR
Then LHR-SAW
You'll note a fair bit of overlapping off-peak (blue shaded in) business class (purple segment) in the 23-27th of June. The first leg is shown as 80k points (and if you know BA and LHR you'll expect around $400 in fees) and the second leg is shown as 24,250 pts. Jumping over to the BA website, you can now start your search on one of those days and find as expected:
While certainly not as slick as being able to search both legs simultaneously, this can still be a lot faster than manually paging through all of the options on BA. In particular when you take advantage of one of RFF's best features, its map view.
Map View
Map view allows you to input either an origin or destination city and date ranges for inbound/outbound travel and generates a interactive map view with colour coordinated icons on all of the potential destinations. If you start by first indentifying a bank of dates where you can fly to LHR off peak in the class of your choosing, you can then generate a world view of flights in that timeframe to identify your target destination (assuming you aren't just planning a trip to London).
Continuing on the above example of late June I found 181 destinations, including Dubai and Bahrain in First class:
For example I filtered the search just to 3 seats in business class and zoomed in on the mediterranean, and while it will likely be too hot for me in June, I checked out Palermo, perhaps I can visit my wife's extended family in Sicily.
With off peak availability on the 23rd and 25th I then jump back to BA's website to search that timeframe from YYZ-PMO and as expected I find 4 seats of business class available at the combined price:
Note that with the common 30% transfer bonus to BA from RBC Avion, this works out to about 77k Avion points for the one way in business.
Alerts
RFF also offers alert options that can be useful if you already know where you want to go but availability is limited. For example, maybe you're planning an around the world itinerary via Japan which is currently a very popular travel destination. You'll find pretty anemic availability with only economy seats at this time:
You can then set up an alert for up to a 90 day window, selecting the desired cabin types and whether or not you want to limit it to off peak pricing. My favourite feature is that you can set the alert beyond the current range of the calendar a feature not every site allows with their alerts. This gives you the potential to be notified of availability as it drops on the most desirable routes - if this is your intention you should consider the more expensive Gold tier to have the best chance of scooping it up. This not only gives you instant alerts but allows you to receive them via SMS in addition to email
For the sake of testing, I created this and several other alerts on high traffic routes to see what comes up. Over the next few days I would periodically get alerts to my email that looked like this:
Conclusion
While it certainly isn't the perfect solution to the BA "problem" requiring yet another workaround for searching, RFF has a visual calendar mode for rapidly scanning availability, and a genuinely useful map view for inspiring vacations out of LHR. The lack of partner airline availability is the bigger miss for me as I otherwise wouldn't mind piecing together individual legs - so if you were hoping to use your BA points to book JAL to TYO you're out of luck with RFF. In my next articles I'll be checking out Seatspy which has a very similar graphical interface but works across more airlines and Pointsyeah which can search Avios transfer partner Iberian.
Referral Links
Check out the RBC Avion cards to take advantage of their recurring 30% transfer bonus to BA Avios.
With its best in market 5x multiplier, Amex Cobalt is a powerful point earner that can get you on flying for free 5 times faster than much of the competition. Sign up using my referral for the best public offer.
If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible.
Check out my Keeper Cards series to see other cards worth exploring
Disclaimer
This should not be taken as financial advice and details are subject to change. I have made good intentioned efforts to be accurate but ultimately consult card terms and conditions
