The Ultimate Guide to Flight Availability Alerts for Award Travel

Award availability can appear after an airline releases more seats, another traveler cancels, or a loyalty program updates its inventory. Repeating the same search every day takes time and can still leave you late to a bookable award seat.

AwardFares award flight alerts help you track award availability for flights bookable with points or miles. You choose the loyalty programs, route, dates, passengers, cabin, and other filters. AwardFares then notifies you when detected availability matches those criteria.

There are two alert types. Live Alerts regularly search specific routes and dates. Flex Alerts watch for broader matches detected across AwardFares. This guide explains when to use each type and how to set up, manage, and improve your alerts.

What Is an Award Flight Alert?

An award flight alert tracks award seats that match a saved search. The search can include a loyalty program, origin, destination, travel date, cabin, number of passengers, operating airline, stops, minimum and maximum prices in points or miles, and other filters.

When AwardFares detects a matching result, the notification links back to the flight details in AwardFares. You can then review the itinerary and continue to the loyalty program or airline to book.

In this guide, award seat alerts always means alerts for award travel availability. It does not mean alerts about aircraft seat assignments.

You can first use Award Search to understand the available routes and dates. If the award seat you need is not available, save the criteria as an alert. For a summary of the feature and plan value, see the Alerts product page.

Live Alerts and Flex Alerts Compared

Choose a Live Alert for a Specific Trip

Use a Live Alert when you know the airports and dates that matter. One setup can include multiple loyalty programs, origins, destinations, dates, or date ranges. Each combination of loyalty program, route, and date counts toward the Live Alert limit shown before you save.

AwardFares starts looking for a new Live Alert within 12 hours. The scheduled search runs around once per 24 hours. A notification can also be triggered when someone runs the same search manually and matching availability is found.

For example, choose Live if you need two Business Class seats from New York (JFK) to London (LHR) during a specific date range.

If you are planning close to the start of an airline’s booking window, check the Award Release Dates guide before deciding when to create the alert.

Choose a Flex Alert for Broader Discovery

Use a Flex Alert when your trip can change. You can select broad regions, use Anywhere for one endpoint, or use Anytime when the date is open.

Flex Alerts do not run a dedicated search on a fixed schedule. They compare your criteria with award availability detected through searches across AwardFares. This supports broad discovery, but it may not find every possible award seat, especially for a route that receives few searches.

For example, choose Flex if you can travel from the Paris area to anywhere in the United States over the winter holidays.

That breadth is easier to see on a map: one region-to-region search can represent many airport pairs instead of a single fixed route.

You can also use the Broad Search guide to explore detected availability before deciding which broad route criteria to save in a Flex Alert.

For the current support reference, see the difference between Live and Flex Alerts.

Current Alert Limits

Alerts are available on the Gold and Diamond plans.

The editor shows how many Live Alerts a setup will use because each loyalty program, unique route, and date combination counts separately. Pricing and limits can change, so confirm the latest terms on the pricing page before upgrading.

How to Set Up Live and Flex Award Flight Alerts

Both tutorials begin in the same place. After opening the alert editor, follow the Live path for a specific trip or the Flex path for broader discovery.

1. Open Alerts

Sign in to AwardFares and open Alerts in the main navigation.

2. Select Add Alert

Select Add Alert to open the alert editor.

Choose Live or Flex

Select the alert type before entering the criteria. The editor explains how each type works and changes the route and date options accordingly.

The screenshots in this tutorial come from an account with a customized Live Alert allowance. Your editor shows the allowance available to your account; the standard Gold and Diamond plan limits are listed above.

Live Alert Tutorial: Specific Route and Dates

Suppose you need two Business Class award seats from New York (JFK) to London (LHR) between October 1 and 17.

1. Select Live.

2. Choose the loyalty programs you can use to book.

   

3. Enter JFK as the origin and LHR as the destination.

   

4. Select October 1–17, or choose only the dates that can work.

   

5. Set Business Class and two passengers. Add only essential filters—for example, a maximum duration of 25 hours.

   

6. Review the usage summary, then select Save.

   

With the two loyalty programs shown, one route and 17 dates use 34 Live Alerts: 2 programs × 1 route × 17 dates. On Gold, selecting one program would reduce the same setup to 17 Live Alerts. The summary updates before you save, so you can remove programs, airports or dates when necessary.

AwardFares sends Live Alert matches by email. If push notifications are enabled, the same Live Alert can also notify those devices.

Flex Alert Tutorial: Broader Route or Dates

Select Flex when part of the trip is open. If you enter an exact airport-to-airport trip that could be monitored more precisely with Live, AwardFares may suggest switching alert types.

For a genuinely flexible example, suppose you can travel from the Paris area to anywhere in the United States between December 23 and January 7 and want a premium cabin:

1. Choose the loyalty programs you can use to book.

2. Enter the Paris metro area (PAR) as the origin and the United States as the destination.

   

3. Select December 23–January 7. You can instead use Anytime when any travel date works.

   

4. Select Business and First Class, two passengers and no more than one stop.

5. Add any other essential filters and review the completed alert before saving.

   

Flex Alerts use push notifications only. Enable push on at least one device so AwardFares can deliver the match. Follow the push notification help guide if your browser or mobile device is not registered.

Create a Live Alert from Award Search

If you have already run the exact search you want to monitor, turn it into a Live Alert without entering the criteria again:

1. In Award Search, select at least one loyalty program, an origin, a destination and a date.
2. Add the cabin, passengers, price or other filters you want to preserve.
3. Open Alert in the search controls and enable tracking.

A search without the required program, origin, destination and date cannot be tracked from the search page. Complete those fields or create the alert from the Alerts page instead.

Filters Available for Alerts

Live and Flex Alerts currently support these filters:

• Cabins: Economy, Premium Economy, Business, or First Class.
• Passengers: Require enough detected award seats for the selected party size.
• Airlines: Include or exclude operating airlines.
• Flight: Limit the alert to a flight number.
• Stops: Choose the acceptable number of stops.
• Airport Changes: Include or exclude itineraries that require changing airports.
• Mixed Cabins: Control whether itineraries can combine cabin classes.
• Price: Set minimum and maximum prices in points or miles.
• Times: Set acceptable departure and arrival times.
• Duration: Limit total trip duration.
• Layover Duration: Limit the duration of connections.
• Saver: Apply the available saver criteria for supported programs.

Filters narrow the matches. If an alert is too restrictive, edit it and remove criteria that are not essential.

The Price filter applies to the award cost in points or miles. You can set a minimum, a maximum, or both. For more examples, read the guide to award price alerts and maximum price filters.

What Matching Fares Means

An alert can show a Matching Fares count when AwardFares already has results or recent searches that meet the saved criteria. Select the count to review those flight results.

The count can change when you edit the route, date, passengers, cabin, price, or other filters. It represents matching results detected in AwardFares. It is not a promise that the loyalty program will still have the seat when you proceed to book.

If a result appears but cannot be booked, follow the phantom availability guide before transferring points or making other nonrefundable arrangements.

How to Manage Your Alerts

The Alerts page lets you:

• Edit the saved criteria.
• Copy an alert to create a similar setup.
• Remove an alert that you no longer need.
• Search using the alert criteria.
• Filter the list by Live or Flex.
• Review how Live and Flex notifications are delivered.

Remove alerts for completed trips so your Live Alert allowance remains available for future searches.

Tips for Better Award Seat Alerts

Start Tracking Award Availability

Use this guide to choose and configure the alert. Visit the Alerts product page for a concise feature overview, then compare the Gold and Diamond plans when you are ready to create alerts.

If you prefer to review current award availability first, start with Award Search, then use the Timeline View guide to compare availability across dates.

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