EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Save 25% on a SeatSpy annual subscription

SeatSpy is offering Head for Points readers 25% off their first year’s membership of an annual ‘First Class’ plan until 31st August 2024

Since it launched a few years ago, SeatSpy has been a convenient way of finding reward seat availability on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, as well as other airlines including American Airlines, Lufthansa and Swiss to name a few.

The site offers subscribers the option to search for Avios and Virgin Points reward seats across an entire year without having to search individual dates.  It is the only service of its type with Virgin Atlantic availability.

Since our last review of SeatSpy the site has undergone a major redesign, which we think has resulted in a cleaner, more user friendly look.

Here is the view of British Airways reward seat availability to New York in September as of last night. It very clearly shows reward seats per cabin on each day, saving a lot of time when you then log in to the airline site (in this case ba.com) to redeem.

For Virgin Atlantic you can take your search one step further and view availability on individual flights for routes with multiple daily services:

This ability to view reward availability across a year’s time frame with a number of airlines is invaluable.

Anyone can view economy reward seat availability via SeatSpy for FREE. However ….

…. the REAL value is being notified of reward seats opening up

SeatSpy can notify you when reward seats open up on specific routes.

You can narrow your request down by date or date range, travel class(es) and number of seats needed.

You can be alerted by email, SMS and/or WhatsApp, either immediately or within the hour depending on which service you subscribe to (more on the options coming up!).

Rob has had a SeatSpy subscription since it was launched and has found it useful many times.  He has never got his head around booking flights 355 days in advance and then finds himself juggling to get four premium seats nearer departure!

Most recently, having missed out on the ‘all Avios’ flight to Dubai in October 2024 because he was boarding a Eurostar at the exact time that the seats opened up, he was able to get 4 Club World seats a few days later.

Certain that many people would ‘book first and ask questions – of their partner – later’, he set a SeatSpy alert and waited for someone to cancel. Sure enough, someone did.  The biggest downside, he says, is that notifications always seem to pop up when you are in the middle of something else – once halfway up a mountain in Spain – and you need to drop everything to make the booking immediately via the flakey BA mobile app ….!

‘Where Can I Go?’

There is another way of searching for availability. If you’re sitting on a pile of points and have a specific timeframe for travelling, this tool will tell you which destinations have availability on your dates for the number of seats you desire, by cabin, for your chosen airline.

Here’s my search for availability for a break in early September. All available routes are displayed and the drop down shown to the right expands to tell you how many seats are available for those dates per cabin.

SeatSpy can ensure you don’t miss any Hilton Honors Experiences or Marriott Bonvoy Moments

SeatSpy also sends out alerts to subscribers for Hilton Honors Experiences and Marriott Bonvoy Moments.

This was used to good effect in the HfP office a couple of years ago when Rhys snagged a pair of tickets (from only nine pairs on offer) to see Stormzy at an exclusive gig at the Hilton Metropole.

It would also have allowed you to get in on Hilton’s astonishing British Grand Prix VIP package this year, which was just 125,000 Hilton Honors points.

(We’ll be honest. If you see an article on HfP about a ticket drop for a new Hilton or Marriott exeriences redemption, we probably found out about it via SeatSpy.)

As with the flight search tool, you can filter your search to get only relevant results. The filter includes the programme, geographical location, area of interest (music, sport etc) and your points range.

SeatSpy has AwardWallet integration

SeatSpy also has an integration with AwardWallet. You can link your AwardWallet account to SeatSpy and see your balances in all the different loyalty programmes that are listed on SeatSpy. This is very handy if you hold points in a variety of programmes.

To find this feature in SeatSpy, you’ll need to head to the ‘Account Details’ section of your profile. You will then need to connect your SeatSpy account to your AwardWallet account by entering the credentials into a secure login form served by AwardWallet themselves.

When you are viewing search results, a slider appears to allow you to optionally filter out seats that you cannot “afford”:

Save 25% on your first year of an annual ‘First Class’ membership

SeatSpy is offering a discount of 25% on ‘First Class’ membership to HfP readers for your first year when you commit to an annual plan:

• First Class membership is equivalent to £4.99 per month under this offer (£59.92 annual payment rather than the ususal £79.90)
• Premium membership is unchanged at £2.49 per month on the annual plan

You can sign up here.

Note that:

• there is no discount if you sign up for a month-by-month plan (First Class is £7.99 per month, Premium is £2.99)
• both plans have a 14-day free trial so you can set up test alerts and see how it goes

How do the tiers differ?

The two key differences between ‘First Class’ and ‘Premium’ are:

• ‘First Class’ members are sent availability alerts as soon as seats are found, whilst ‘Premium’ members receive alerts once per hour. It is up to you to decide if being up to 59 minutes behind other people will mean the seats you want are gone.
• ‘First Class’ members can have an unlimited number of saved alerts whilst ‘Premium’ members are limited to four active alerts

The latter one is likely to be the big differentiator. It is very easy to use up your quota of four alerts, especially if there are multiple airports you could use for a flight (eg San Francisco or San Jose) or you have a lot of potential holiday ideas.

You can search for multiple flight classes in one alert. You don’t use two alerts by looking for either Business Class or First Class – this is only counted as one.

The link to sign up with the 25% discount is here. The offer ends on 31st August 2024.

Remember that you can try out SeatSpy for free by searching for economy redemptions, so why not try it out? The home page is here but to see the special HfP pricing you need to use this link to sign-up.