Looking for a free way to track reward seat availability? You might be in luck….
Avios has launched a new feature within their app that could make finding reward seats even easier. It’s not perfect – there are some serious limitations – but it’s a new way to keep track of seats and focus on earning the Avios needed to secure them.
What has been launched?
Avios has a new feature called Goals. You might see a popup when you open up the Avios app that lets you know how many Avios you’ve collected recently. That screen also talks about setting an “Avios Goal”.
It promises to help you:
- Calculate your perfect trips price
- Get tips to help you collect Avios
- Check flight availability.
This is a much bigger feature than what you might think.
How will Avios Goals help you find availability?
Let’s walk through what this new feature actually is.
When you click to set up an Avios Goal, it will ask you where you want to travel. You can search for a destination or browse the options already listed.
It’ll then ask you some details about your trip: is this a one-way or return journey? How many people want to travel? And what class of travel you want to fly in (Economy, Premium, Business and First).
You can only select one class of travel.
This is the first flaw in the system, as some travellers might want to understand availability in both Business and First Class at the same time.
You can now see all availability by date
Once you’ve entered that information, you’ll be taken to a calendar that runs from today up to twelve months into the future. It actually runs a little longer than 365 days; so, for example, we’re on the 6th of March, and the calendar is visible until the end of March 2026.
This calendar view is very useful, as it puts a small coloured underline on each date that shows you how many seats are available to book on that date. Green is for “plenty of seats”, amber is “some seats”, red is “limited seats” and no underline means that the flight is “sold out” (which really means there are no Avios seats available at this point in time).
You can select a single date for the outbound journey. Then, if you’re interested in a return ticket, it will ask you to pick the return date. You cannot select a range of dates, nor a whole month.
That’s another limitation on this new feature. Most people will want to set a range of dates for Avios availability.
Can you add more than one goal?
No. You can edit the dates on the goal you set, or you can delete it and create a new goal.
Where do you access the Goals in the Avios app?
When you set a goal it’s visible on the homepage of the app, around halfway down. If you haven’t yet setup a goal then there will be a block explaining how it works on the app homepage.
Does this replace other reward seat-finding platforms?
No. This new feature is welcome and serves a purpose, but it has some critical limitations.
I’ve covered all the different reward seat availability platforms in my post “Best (and worst) ways to search for Avios availability“.
The reality is that this new feature is not aimed at people who want to understand availability over a range of dates. It’s focused on helping you hit a specific goal, which is to travel to a particular destination on a single date.
As you earn more Avios, it will help you understand how close you are to your goal. Most travellers want – especially those who are Avios rich – to understand availability over a range of dates to multiple destinations.
Can you can get emailed when seats become available?
Actually yes. Not via the Avios Goals feature, but if you go to the Spend page on the app, then select Search Flight Availability you can carry out a search for seats. If you select dates that have no availability, a message will appear from the base of the screen saying. There’s a tickbox that says “To set an alert, you must agree to our terms and conditions”. The only problem, for me at least, is that there’s no way to actually setup the alert. I’m assuming there’s a hidden button at the base.
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