I’ve been using the website Point.me to search for award flights ever since it launched. While there are more powerful award search tools out there, I find that Point.me does a great job of combining an award search engine with a customer-friendly user interface. Point.me focuses on making it easy for people not aware of every sweet spot to use their points for the best value possible.
We’re the first company to offer a tool that makes it easier to use miles and points for air travel. Not only does our tool show you flight options that are bookable using your points, we also guide you step-by-step to book the flight yourself!
I’ve used the site to find award tickets I otherwise might have overlooked:
So you can see that I use the site quite a bit for our travels.
One of the downsides of looking for award flights is that each search takes several minutes. That’s understandable, as the engine has to search every program to find which one offers the lowest price for a route.
That’s why I was excited when I received an email from Point.me announcing their newest addition to the website. Called QuickLook, it provides an instant look at results found by other members. You’re then able to decide if it’s worthwhile to do a full search or if you’d be better off searching a different city.
Here’s a video that shows how it works:
This would be most helpful if searching for overseas flights and you need to search each international hub to see if there’s availability.
Point.me says that QuickLook is still in the beta phase and not available for all routes or dates.
First things first, it’s important to note that QuickLook is currently in its beta phase. This means it’s not yet available for all routes or dates. When you enter a route and date that is eligible for QuickLook, we’ll automatically notify you and provide you with the option to view QuickLook search results. Look out for this button on select routes where you can use QuickLook:
We’re working to extend the reach of QuickLook to make more routes and dates available.
I did several searches on the site to test out QuickLook. Each time, I received this message,
I looked for our usual Orlando to New York economy route, as well as business and economy on flights from New York to Los Angeles, New York to London, Tokyo to Sydney, and Singapore to Melbourne. No results were available. I tried dates that were close in and far away, all with the same result: that search wasn’t eligible yet.
In fact, the only time I was able to get QuickLook to work was when I searched for the exact same flight used in their demo video. New York JFK to Barcelona in business class for 1 passenger on 2/7/2024.
If I changed anything like the date, class of service or airport, I received the message that the search wasn’t eligible yet. In fact, the flight result for QuickLook says the result for JFK-BCN was last updated 7 days ago. Which would be about when they made the video.
When I hear that something is in Beta testing, I expect there to be some problems. Maybe it crashes or gives bad results. That’s why Beta testing is usually done before a product is released to the general public.
During beta testing, a group of users tests software before it is released to the public to identify any issues or bugs that may have been missed during previous testing phases. Beta testers are typically volunteers who use the software in real-world scenarios to provide feedback to the developers. This feedback helps the developers improve the software and fix any issues before it is released. This testing is critical as it ensures that the final product is stable, user-friendly, and meets the needs of its intended users.
I’m looking forward to using QuickLook when searching for our next big award trip. Hopefully, by then they’ll turn it on, even if it’s still in the Beta testing phase.
There’s another teaser on the website that they’re working on being able to search for multiple airports in the same city. That will be great so you don’t have to do one search for flights to JFK, another to Newark and then one to LaGuardia. However, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
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5 comments
Did you buy a subscription?
Yes I did. No freebies here 🙂
I wasn’t suggesting impropriety. I was just wondering whether you paid for a day at a time or bought a subscription.
I’m paying for a monthly sub. Didn’t want to pay for a yearly without knowing how good the results were going to be. I havne’t canceled but I also haven’t upgraded.
So in other words, what they’re going to do is offer you stale results. For example, person a searches for JFK to Barcelona on a given date. The website shows availability for two people, so now person a goes and books it. 1 minute later person b goes online and does exactly the same search and point.me is going to show that same availability because the website has cached data from a previous search but has not actually refreshed it because they’re not aware that person there has already made the booking. So person b transfers miles thinking that they can book it, only to find out. Hey, guess what? That availability is actually phantom.
This is simply a lazy way by the website to pretend that it’s doing search faster, without actually having to do the work of it doing the search faster.