How Far in Advance Can You Book Airline Award Tickets? Our Full Guide With Data Points for 50 Airlines.

One of the most challenging aspects of award travel is finding airline award tickets. It’s no secret that airlines limit saver-level award space — particularly premium cabin awards when flying popular routes. At times, there can be only a handful of seats available over the entire schedule.

One common strategy to snag the award you need is to search for award availability at the outer limits of the booking window — as soon as carriers open their schedules. This leaves one wondering: How far in advance can you book airline award tickets?

Airline booking windows can vary by as much as 60 days — even more if factoring in revenue-based rewards programs. Plus, there are some details that are critical to understand. We'll walk you through airline booking calendars, how that affects the ability to book award tickets, and other factors that influence award space.

Airline Booking Calendar Basics

Most airlines open their booking calendars on a rolling basis. However, no airline opens its calendar more than 365 days in advance — in part to prevent travelers from accidentally booking a flight for the wrong year. The majority of carriers allow flight bookings 10–12 months in advance. If you're curious about the exact window each carrier uses, we have that data tabulated below.

Credit: Scott Graham/Unsplash

Many airlines also release award seats as soon as they open up flight bookings. Some airlines offer an award space guarantee. On other carriers, award space isn't guaranteed but the airline historically offers a set number of seats available in each cabin as soon as their schedule opens. So, booking as soon as the calendar opens is a strategy many people use to snag a seat on the exact flight they want. This is especially useful on popular routes where it can be difficult to find award space.

Searching at the edge of the booking schedule doesn't guarantee you’ll secure that elusive first-class redemption. But as a general rule, your chances of redeeming miles for an award ticket increase the farther out you search.

However, there is one key “gotcha” with this strategy. If the booking window of your frequent flyer program (the miles you want to use) is shorter than that of the operating carrier (the airline you want to fly), you could face a significant handicap over members of that carrier’s loyalty program.

Related: How To Find Airline Partner Award Flight Availability

Schedule window vs. loyalty program window

Let's illustrate this with an example. All Nippon Airways (ANA) opens its booking window 355 days out, which is when flights are added to ANA's schedule. If you book using ANA Mileage Club miles, you can book an award ticket as soon as the calendar opens. Therefore, ANA has a 355-day window for booking award flights. Here, I'm searching for an award flight from Vancouver to Tokyo.

The ANA booking window opens 355 days out. Credit: ANA

Air Canada Aeroplan notably has an even longer award booking window at 360 days. This means that ANA members don't have any advantage over Aeroplan members when trying to book the same seats on ANA flights. Any seats ANA makes available to partners will be bookable using Aeroplan miles, since the Aeroplan booking window opens earlier.

Oddly, the Aeroplan calendar initially only lets you book 356 days out. But you can then toggle into the future up to 360 days out for both cash and award tickets.

The Aeroplan calendar allows up to 356 days in advance, at initial search: Credit: Aeroplan

However, what if you want to book this ANA flight using United MileagePlus miles? United only opens its flight schedule 337 days out — for both cash bookings and award flights with United or partners. If you want to book an ANA award with MileagePlus miles, you'd need to wait until you're 337 days away from your trip. That's 18 days after ANA members have already started scooping up award availability.

The above award availability using ANA Mileage Club is the final day of the airline's schedule (November 7, 2025) for a search run on November 17, 2024. The Aeroplan award search calendar shows one day fewer (through November 6, 2025), but you can adjust the date to up to 360 days out. Searching United.com on the same day, you can only search through October 20, 2025.

United only allows you to search for awards 337 days out — one of the shortest windows among Star Alliance carriers

You're at a clear disadvantage if you want to book a popular route with limited award availability using United miles. Both Aeroplan members and ANA Mileage Club members have over two more weeks to redeem miles for award seats before you even have a chance to make a booking!

It comes down to this: The frequent flyer program you're using to book dictates the award booking window — NOT the airline you fly.

The reverse isn't a problem

For airlines that don't open their schedule as far out, the frequent flyer program you're using matters far less. United opens its schedule 337 days out. It doesn't matter that you plan to book a United flight with ANA Mileage Club. You simply can't book anything until United opens its schedule. And when United opens the schedule, seats may be available to book with United miles or with partners.

In a nutshell, you should be aware of programs providing members additional time to book award seats in advance of other frequent flyer programs. 

But watch out for mismatched booking calendars

There are a handful of programs where the booking window for the airline's frequent flyer program does not match the schedule release window. Some are off by just a day. This leads to either one of two possibilities:

1. You can book awards on other airlines, even though flights aren't released for the airline whose frequent flyer program you're using.
2. You can use another airline's frequent flyer program to book awards on the operating airline's flights before that airline's frequent flyer program can.

You'll see examples of both of these in the table below. There are only a couple programs (like Avianca) where the award booking window is a bit longer than the carrier's own schedule window. In this case, you can use LifeMiles to book awards on other carriers whose schedules are available. However, you need to wait a handful of days for Avianca to release its own flight schedule. It's weird, but it could prove useful.

Conversely, you could potentially get a jump on an award before members of an airline's own frequent flyer program. Aeromexico is an example of this. Flights are added to the schedule 331 days out, but awards can only be booked 330 days out. You could potentially use partner miles, such as Delta SkyMiles, to snag a seat before Aeromexico Rewards members.

One important thing to remember: to book a partner award, there must be saver-level award space available on the operating carrier. Many times, the operating carrier will have more award seats available to their own loyalty program members. But saver space is what is made available to partners. If you need a primer on booking partner awards, we’ve put together a guide covering the best websites and to search for saver-level partner awards.

How Far in Advance Can You Book Airline Award Tickets?

If you've been curious about the specifics on how far in advance you can book award flights with each program, the wait is over. Listed below are the booking windows. They are arranged alphabetically by program, but you can sort them from longest to shortest.

The first column shows the number of days in advance flights are scheduled with a particular airline. The second column shows how many days out you can book an award ticket through a particular airline's frequent flyer program. For many airlines, these are equal, and no number is listed in the second column if this is the case.

The revenue-based JetBlue TrueBlue and Southwest Rapid Rewards offer the shortest windows. However, neither of these programs is subject to the award space gremlins of traditional programs (i.e., if a revenue seat is available, it’s possible to book with points).

We want to highlight Avianca LifeMiles as a program that can book all partners' award seats through the end of the schedule. It doesn't look like you can do this at first glance when performing a search. But if you know a carrier has released seats, search one of its routes up to the end of the provided calendar. Then, keep clicking the right arrow to move the window along through the end of the schedule. I've found Lufthansa flights bookable 360 days out this way.

Aeroplan is another program where the initial search only lets you set it to 356 days out, but you can use the calendar to navigate out to 360 days.

Award Availability Isn't Always Released When the Booking Window Opens

There is another twist. Award seats don’t always open at the edge of the booking window for paid fares. Some airlines consistently open a set number of seats when the schedule is loaded. However, others routinely release award space based on other factors. Route popularity and time of year seem to be key. Award space is then often released at additional points throughout the year, dictated by supply and demand. If you’re traveling during a busy holiday period, particularly on popular routes, expect award space to be limited.

On the flip side, award space can open close-in if the carrier doesn’t think it will sell all the seats. I cannot tell you how many times I've booked last-minute award tickets. It's actually a consistent strategy for me on a few routes. But it's not foolproof. To aid you, consider using tools like SeatsAero to set alerts for award space on select routes/carriers.

Something else to consider is that an operating carrier may not release award space to partners until close-in. For instance, Lufthansa doesn’t release first-class award space to mileage partners until just a few days out, in many cases. This leaves award travelers to sweat out the wait if they’re not booking through Miles & More. Not everyone has the flexibility this requires, either, which makes it difficult if you're really hoping to fly a product like Lufthansa First.

Related: How To Book Lufthansa First Class Using Miles

Even worse, some programs don't release award space to partners at all. SWISS and Air France are examples of this. They don't allow partner bookings for their first-class seats. You must book through their respective frequent flyer programs and hold a specified level of elite status to boot. This aces out the vast majority of program members.

Similarly, Singapore Airlines doesn’t release awards for its premium suites to partners. If you want to redeem miles for Singapore’s first-class suites, you must transfer points to KrisFlyer. This is another reason we recommend collecting transferable points like Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards. You can move points from four different flexible rewards programs to KrisFlyer when it's time to book.

How Far in Advance Should You Book a Flight Award?

If you're booking with miles that allow free cancellation, book at the soonest opportunity and lock in your award. The only downside is that this ties up your miles for nearly a year when you could use them for other things. For many carriers, booking as soon as the schedule opens is a great strategy — as long as they are among those that release awards (most do).

However, if you're not sure about your trip plans, make sure to factor in potential award change or cancellation fees. There are some currencies I use primarily for close-in awards that I know I will take (barring illness or injury) since the award cancellation fees are so steep.

Independent Tools To Help Find Award Availability

We’ve covered the best websites and booking engines to find award availability in another post. Most airline websites offer limited functionality and don’t provide all the tools you’ll need to secure the best awards. There are some clear winners, though, for searching most airline awards, and we provide the best options for each situation and/or alliance.

However, there are clear times to call in some more specialized equipment. If you want to get creative with your routing or set an alert for a specific aircraft/cabin combination, consider using a paid award search aggregator. Here are some of the more popular tools available.

Point.me

Of all the tools to help find award availability, Point.me is probably the easiest to use. Its user interface is excellent. Like other tools, it lets you search award availability across a swath of loyalty programs. But unlike ExpertFlyer or AWardNexus, Point.me doesn't just provide seat availability. It immediately tells you which points transfer to the frequent flyer program(s) that can book the award and even provides the steps to the booking process. Point.me is more ideal for the award travel novice versus a service like ExpertFlyer, which is more difficult to navigate for the uninitiated.

Point.me does have a cost. The monthly self-service subscription is priced at $12, or $129 per year. There are occasional sales on their subscription service as well. You can also buy a one-time pass to try it out for $5, providing 24 hours of access.

Related: Point.me Review

Roame.travel

Roame.travel has a great user interface similar to what Point.me provides. You can search seat availability pulled from a dozen award programs all in the same search. This beats checking each airline's site for award space. Roame went for speed. It falls short of the number of programs Point.me scours, but the search results load quickly.

The search is intuitive, and Roame provides a rundown of which loyalty program you can use to book the ticket and the points that you can transfer as well. Finally, Roame shows how much of a given itinerary is in a premium cabin — a feature I appreciate greatly.

Roame offers a good number of their features for free, although you do need to provide an email to be able to search. To do things like multi-region searches, set alerts, or see a 60-day availability window, you do need a “Friends of Roame” subscription. Their pricing is a bit cheaper than Point.me, at less than $10 per month.

Seats.Aero

If you're looking for last-minute trip ideas for maximizing your points, you can't beat Seats.aero. While it can help with specific searches, I find that it has a different place among the arsenal of tools. Free usage (no sign-up required) lets you view seats available through any of 17 loyalty programs for the upcoming two months. You can literally search anywhere to anywhere. Results are chronological, and only nonstop routes are provided.

It's a great tool if you're flexible with where you want to go and looking for trip ideas, desiring to spend your points as economically as possible. I find its best use is to search your home continent to anywhere, filtering by your home airport code. You'll get a quick first cut at the current award availability. If you want access to a few more features, you can register for a Pro subscription. This gives you access to a full year of data and lets you create and set alerts.

As SeatsAero generally shares cached availability, it's not foolproof. For some searches, once I moved on to the airline site itself, the award availability wasn't there anymore. But it is an excellent tool.

ExpertFlyer

ExpertFlyer is a subscription service costing $4.99–$9.99 per month. You can also purchase an annual subscription for $99.99. ExpertFlyer allows you to search for award seats across a large array of frequent flyer programs. You also use it to view seat maps, search for upgrade space, and set alerts and notifications if your desired dates don’t show award seat availability. Its best feature is the “set it and forget it” functionality for checking award space. This saves you the time of checking yourself daily or weekly. If space pops up, you'll receive an email notification from ExpertFlyer.

It does have its limits, and it comes at a cost. But it's a handy tool to add to your award search toolkit.

Award Nexus

Award Nexus is another subscription-based tool with varied pricing models. The upside is that Award Nexus is a comprehensive award search tool that allows you to search multiple routes, cabin classes, dates, and airlines in a single query. It's intended to find space on complex routes or for elusive first- or business-class space. Award Nexus pulls data from numerous airline sites, including all airlines within the three airline alliances.

It’s not a perfect service, but the ability to search complicated routes across a multitude of airlines can save you a ton of legwork compared to manual searches using airline websites alone. Award Nexus also offers similar alert functionality to ExpertFlyer.

Google Flights

While Google Flights isn't meant for finding award seats, it is a tool for finding scheduled flights in general. And for that, it's a great tool. But it's useless for helping get a jump on award seats. Google Flights uses a 329-day window. This is after all the major U.S. carriers have released their schedules.

Other tools

If there are other tools on your radar that might be of value to fellow award travel enthusiasts, please let us know in the comments.

If you're still struggling to find the award you want, AwardWallet offers a concierge award booking service. We have an experienced team who can search for the award you want and complete your booking for you. This service does have both a search fee and a booking fee.

Final Thoughts

Understanding how far in advance you can book award flights can help immensely with booking an award ticket. Understanding the schedule window versus the frequent flyer booking window for each program is the most critical. You can take advantage of the longer booking windows of Asian frequent flyer programs like ANA Mileage Club and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles to secure award space on the carrier's own flights before that space is visible to partner programs.

Combine this with knowing which carriers release award seats immediately when the schedule is released, plus the tools listed above, and you'll have a powerful arsenal to secure the flight awards you want.

Don't forget to check out our post on how far in advance you can book hotel reservations.

AwardWallet Tip of The Day

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