Saturday Roundup

One big development in the world of flight bookings, one incredible offer for targeted AA Aviator cardholders, and one of the most flexible airline points currencies gets even better.

Google Flights Searches Now Include Southwest

For a long time, if you wanted to get the best deal on airfare within and around the US, you had to do two searches: one on Google Flights and one the Southwest Airlines website. SWA often has very good prices, but their flights didn’t show up on Google Flights search results, and their own website lacks Google’s powerful money- and time-saving tools like multi-city and flexible date searches. So you either had to spend double the time (or more) searching for flights on Southwest.com or miss out on potentially cheaper airfares.

Thankfully, that is all over now, and you can finally see Southwest flights in Google Flights search results. This makes comparison shopping much easier and, as Nerdwallet explains here, can potentially help you take advantage of Southwest’s generous change policies to save more money even after booking. A big win for travelers.

Triple miles on the AA Aviator

Barclays is once again offering targeted AA Aviator cardholders a very nice bonus opportunity:

If you take full advantage of this deal (by spending over $300 per month but under $1000 total), you’d earn over 3 miles per dollar spent on everyday, non-bonus spending, an extremely high rate of return that would make it the best card for that purpose in almost anyone’s wallet. I wrote about this offer before, but this time people won’t have the option to transfer Bilt points to AA, making this opportunity to earn precious AA miles even more valuable. If you have an AA Aviator card, be sure to check to see if you received this offer in your inbox.

Finnair adopts Avios

Every major bank offers transfers to an airline that uses Avios as its frequent flyer currency (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Qatar). Once transferred to one airline, Avios can be transferred freely between the various Avios airlines. Personally, I’ve never seen a good use for Avios, but this may depend on where you live—I’ve seen good deals on domestic flights between Chicago and New York via British Airways Avios and relatively cheap business class flights between New York and Spain via Iberia Avios, for example.

Recently, Finnair adopted Avios as its reward currency, and more options is always a good thing. I’m not too familiar with Finnair, but I recommend this One Mile At A Time post for an overview of how the new Avios program will work. It looks promising!