Originally Posted by PWMTrav

One suggestion - make award search return the miles required for the award regardless of balances. For instance, right now I haven't populated any info so I have 0's in everything. It tells me I can't redeem. Would be better to show the require miles for those too lazy to populate balances (or those that don't want to do that). It's useful to know what a redemption costs.

Originally Posted by pointimize

Your're right! We've also received several similar feedback.

The reason why we did that is trying to save time loading all reward programs as well as calculating the mileage for each one flight route. It could really take a great deal of time and even worse when we support more frequent flyer programs in the future!

Nevertheless we've found a possible solution and are currently working on it. We'll update soon and hope this could improve your using experience!

Thanks again!

Originally Posted by PWMTrav

You're doing good work. I wouldn't take the time to suggest improvements otherwise. FWIW, I added every available program with 1 million miles and the search performance wasn't bad. I would caution you though, depending on how you are acquiring this data, that hammering the sources may raise some issues. In that regard, doing some short term caching of results and returning those may help you. With all of the data you have, you will eventually be able to figure out how long a particular award stays available once it becomes available and assign a TTL of sorts to each award type. You can expire from the cache on that TTL (or something derived from it), where a cache miss results in a customer getting momentary false hope. That addresses awards you find - searching for ones that don't exist is a different problem. But that's my two cents on the potential design that you totally didn't ask for

Originally Posted by Shimon

I keep on getting a 500 error when attempting to search flights.

Edit: and now its asking me for a new activation code.

Originally Posted by pointimize

Hi Everyone,

Pointimize has officially launched the new Award Flight Search today! We’re very excited about this new feature and the benefits it will bring to all the points travelers!

This unique feature handles the exhausting task of comparing reward miles and cash for travelers. Pointimize completes this arduous task by sifting through the rewards of your selected frequent flyer programs, its partners as well as other alliance members!! For each trip, Pointimize will present all the mileage information required to redeem a trip. With both mileage and cash prices listed clearly on the same page, you can now easily make the decision that usually takes hours of research!

Here is the link: https://www.pointimize.com/

We currently support the 9 most frequently used frequent flyer programs in North America, including:

• American Airlines (AAdvantage)
• United Airlines (MileagePlus)
• Alaska Air (Mileage Plan)
• Hawaiian Airlines (HawaiianMiles)
• Air Canada (Aeroplan)
• British Airways (Executive Club)
• Iberia Airlines (Iberia Plus)
• ANA (ANA Mileage Club)
• Virgin Atlantic (Flying Club)

(when you select the programs on the left, the redeemable airlines populate on the right)


(as shown in the below image, Pointimize lists complete search results for both mileage and cash!)


We’d like to invite several participants for beta testing. Due to the stability of the Pointimize host, we will control the number of codes that can be used to access this feature. Please give it try if you are interested. Each code is unique and can only be used by one user email.

Please try the codes below:

IZS6SD6R
0BLK3OEL
KTO7WOQ3
8WK2F5O1
2922LTM2
59FEHC4Q
KQ3O62VU
V13PIV72
IP0NEGLQ
1QC9NS1Q
KELE7GAY
CDH7NGL8
EQV11O30
TMADZ3RR
T4JQ8IKS
LM192C06
WSVPD8ZC
9SEBTPDH
TG73A1HN
MZHW26T4
DH47HCLK
GCSTHMG2
ZQ2QP06Y
QADQT2BB
ON8V8PCU
9AVDB3TR
YACM2NAQ
CYEQ5T0U
CLI92R6O
YOUOMOM6
7F19HZ8S
J7CE2ZLL
10MFZA6P
B134TNBJ
46DN3HYB
48C0HGG5
N50M77KV
QBSVWZCZ
6GMIG52C
1Z9TT2RM
JLCMTWJT
E9KJRM8B
G0NI5BZV
IWLL3V24
SC3C6J73
0DP602Z2
YFQ3E7UA
H0NTNVT4
9NO2BPOD
IF5UZMZG

Feel free to share any thoughts you may have, as your feedback will play a key role in helping us improve this feature. We will keep updating and increasing the number of supporting airlines reward programs. Please reply below if the codes have all been used and thus invalid. We’ll generate new codes if applicable.

Cheers!
Adu

Originally Posted by cakelover

I tried some codes, but the system returns as "undefined". May I get a valid code? Thank you.

Originally Posted by Smiley90

I used "V13PIV72", thanks! gonna give it a try

edit: is there no way to search for award flights without giving my awardwallet info? I'm not sure I feel comfortable enough doing that. I can search hotels just fine, but flights only returns cash-prices (and no display that no points-flights are available, if that is the case)

edit2: nvm I can just add it on the left-hand side, all good

edit3: I'm like 90% sure booking NA-Europe via HKG is not a valid routing on the award chart......

Originally Posted by pointimize

Hi Smiley90,

Thanks for the insights! You are right about the YVR-HKG-ZRH. It cannot be redeemed. There is apparently one rule we missed in our rule engine. We're working on that now!

Adu

Originally Posted by Smiley90

It looks great though, very handy for those with points distributed: One thing though: Given that it looks up availability and prices, it'd be extremely helpful if it could also display taxes on award flights, as those vary significantly between airlines.

If not the prices themselves, then maybe built-in displays of which airlines always pass on fuel surcharges onto which redemptions? (e.g. BA always passes on fuel surcharges when using AAdvantage miles, whereas AA flights don't, or CX doesn't pass on fuel surcharges when using Avios, etc)

Originally Posted by pointimize

Yes the tax and fee are something we are currently working on, not only for displaying more info, but for our points/mileage valuation. However our API provider does not have such data and we're still looking for a better solution.

Thanks for the insights!