Pointsyeah is the latest entrant in what is starting to become a plethora of online award search tools that have emerged over the past couple of years. At the time of posting this article the biggest difference between Pointsyeah and the others is that Pointsyeah is completely free. While many of the other search engines have free options, this latest entrant includes additional features and alerts at no charge that others tend to only include with their paid memberships.
Which programs does Pointsyeah search?
Currently Pointsyeah will search award availability with the following 16 21 airlines (and show flights with their respective program partners)
- AeroMexico Rewards
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France / KLM Flying Blue
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
- American Airlines AAdvantage
- Avianca Lifemiles
- Copa ConnectMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- Frontier Airlines Miles
- Iberia Plus Avios
- Jetblue TrueBlue
- Qantas Frequent Flyer Points
- Spirit Airlines FreeSpirit
- SAS EuroBonus
- TAP Air Portugal Miles & Go
- Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
- United Airlines MileagePlus
- Virgin Australia Velocity
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
How Pointsyeah works
Pointsyeah works like every other flight search engine you may be accustomed to. 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 seconds to display as they are going out and checking all the sites. You’ll see progress bar above the results to let you know how far the search has progressed and when it is complete.
Here are what the results will look like, I searched Ottawa to Paris on October 30, 2023 (taxes/fees are displayed in US$):
The site defaults to show the lowest price flights but you can select other options including departure time, shortest flight or lowest taxes. You can also filter the results by program, number of stops, airlines and points range:
How do I find Canadian transfer options
You’ll mainly want to focus on the bottom portion of the results as that shows the actual frequent flyer program the results are for. Pointsyeah is targeted to the U.S. market so the transfer options they show on the upper portion of the results are for U.S. based credit cards
Also note the taxes and fees shown on the reward results are shown in US dollars.
If you do have a U.S. credit card from Chase, American Express etc. then no worries as some or all of the transfer options provided by Pointsyeah should apply to you.
Now that you have that information, as a Canadian you can still use this as a powerful award search engine for award flights 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 Pointsyeah and our list.
Canadian Transfer Partners
At the highest level these will be the Canadian 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)
- 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)
* – You can also include Aer Lingus, Iberia and Qatar Airways with British Airways as you can transfer Avios between these programs
** – Diners Club is closed to new applicants, we have listed it for those who do hold the card
I think most Canadians will definitely find Pointsyeah a great tool for transborder or international flights and for flights that are wholly outside of Canada. The reason why is that with domestic flights you’re pretty much going to be searching Aeroplan or WestJet.
That said – it doesn’t mean you should count out Pointsyeah for domestic flights. The site will show you options with other Star Alliance and partner airlines where the points/miles required may actually be less for Air Canada flights.
For example here’s Toronto to Vancouver in Business Class showing results from Virgin Australia Velocity:
Once you do find results that work for you click on the results box you’ll be presented with an expanded results view that includes links that will take to you to airline or program to book with:
Pointsyeah will automatically provide the data to the airline/program booking engine so that you are presented with the award search results (no need to fill in all the info again although you will need to login to complete the actual booking)
Pointsyeah’s extra features that are free!
Multiple day search
Pointsyeah has an option for user to conduct a multi day search that spans up to three days. This option is seen on other award search sites but typically only in the paid versions. To access multi dates search simply check the box above the “Yeah” search button and then select up to 3 consecutive in the calendar to search.
Points Price Alerts
Another feature that Pointsyeah provides at no cost to registered users are Points Price Alerts. Users can set up to three Points Price Alerts with unlimited continuous tracking of those alerts. Those three alerts can comprise of three separate one day searches, one multi date award search covering three days, or a combo of one one day search and one multi date covering two days (Basically one search day = one Points Price Alert). Users will be alerted by email notification and also on their My Points Price Alerts page on the site to any changes to the alert.
The battle for the best search engine
Pointsyeah claims to have the fastest award search engine with results displayed in as a little as 10 seconds. This is two seconds faster than Roame, who also currently claims to have the fastest award search. I’m not sure 2 seconds will be noticed by most users but whatever they all claim – the competition between all these sites benefits the customer! Thanks to all them we are seeing faster search results, additional features and additional airlines that we can search award availability with.
Recommended: The Best Loyalty Rewards Tools and Apps
Wrapping it up
So what do we think of Pointsyeah? Is it a perfect award search site? No, but so far all of the award search sites and apps out there have not been – each has their own pros and cons. Pointsyeah definitely has the potential to save a lot of time when searching for award flights especially with the Points Price Alerts and the fact they offer for free is great.
Ultimately I would consider it one more tool in your toolbox of apps, websites and strategies for finding award flight availability. Using Pointsyeah in combination with other techniques and sites can be a great way to find the flights that are best for you in terms of pricing, dates, routing and program(s) to utilize.
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All images and screenshots via Pointsyeah!