Could this free reward flight search, Ruma Travel, be the key to your next flight?

You'll all know the pain that is finding reward flights. Multiple tabs open at once, fighting airline systems that insist on logging you out every five minutes (I'm looking at you Virgin Atlantic, Qatar Airways etc). This, in part, is why we created our Avios calculator, because nowhere else online allows you to directly compare the Avios pricing among all the Avios airlines, and we felt like that was important.

Meanwhile, for a user friendly experience that allows you to actually search for availability, particularly non-BA availability, the better options are US-focused sites such as point.me or seats.aero, but full functionality of these sites remain behind a paywall. I will admit to having needed to use these extensively in the past (let me know if you'd like us to do a full breakdown on all services available to you to search for points availability).

But now, a UK focused version has surfaced, Ruma Travel, and it's free!

This is not a sponsored post. I did briefly mention Ruma Travel in last weeks Instagram Q&A in response to a question regarding finding non-BA availability, so consider this an introduction to the next hopeful contender in the UK miles and points space.

Ruma Travel works exactly how you'd expect a flight search, like Skyscanner, to work.

Simply input your origin and destination, add the dates you want to travel etc, and it will search for your flights looking both at cash fares (using Kayak as it's search backbone), as well as availability using points. Unlike a service such as Reward Flight Finder, which will list your results as a calendar showing you a broad range of availability, Ruma Travel will list your options in a list format, as this is a better way of showing you multiple airlines, times, points programmes etc.

For points availability, Ruma Travel will search the following airline reward programmes:

• Aer Lingus AerClub**

• Aeroméxico Rewards

• Aeroplan (Air Canada)

• Air France–KLM Flying Blue*

• Alaska Mileage Plan

• American Airlines AAdvantage

• Avianca LifeMiles

• British Airways Executive Club*

• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

• Delta SkyMiles*

• Emirates Skywards*

• Etihad Guest

• Finnair Plus**

• GOL Smiles

• Iberia Plus*

• JetBlue TrueBlue

• Lufthansa Miles & More

• Qantas Frequent Flyer*

• Qatar Airways Privilege Club*

• SAS EuroBonus*

• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer*

• Southwest Rapid Rewards

• TAP Miles&Go

• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles

• United MileagePlus

• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club*

• Virgin Australia Velocity

*can be transferred into from American Express Membership Rewards

**can be transferred into from other Avios airlines

Now, a lot of these programmes may be alien to you, but you are able to filter airlines/reward programmes/airports to hone what is actually relevant for your needs.

One other thing worth knowing, is that you can apply vouchers, such as a Companion Voucher to the search. These include:

• Finnair Companion Benefit

• Barclays Upgrade Voucher

• Companion Voucher (BA Amex - Blue)

• Companion Voucher (BA Amex Premium Plus)

• Lufthansa Companion Award

• Virgin Atlantic Reward Companion Voucher (Gold and Silver Status)

• Virgin Atlantic Reward Companion Voucher (Red Status)

At present you are unable to search your Virgin Atlantic Reward Voucher in its upgrade form (see guide here). This is because for each search you make you must select a single cabin. This means that if you wanted to use your voucher in its upgrade state, you would need the points value of the cabin lower than that of what you're currently searching. Whilst this could be achieved, there are some technical limitations to this at present.

Going back up to that search result, you'll see that I've selected "Ruma Match". What this will do, is compare points availability and the cash price and give you a simple recommendation as to whether the best option is to use points or to pay with cash. For this BA flight to Singapore, Ruma Travel recommends that I use points.

We would typically say that any value above 1p per airline point is good value, whereas Ruma has set 1.5p as its benchmark, so do bear that in mind.

If I change my search to London to New York on the same dates, you'll see that Ruma indicates that paying cash is the better option, and that using points would represent "bad value".

If comparing against a cash fare is not something you need, then you can filter along the top of the results to search "Points Only", or choose "Cash Only" for the opposite.

Lastly, coming soon is a search function for hotels. One can only hope its as good as Roame's hotel search (again, another US points platform).

Is this Ruma Travel the future?

Is Ruma Travel perfect? No. But would I expect a homebrew project like this to be flawless on day one? Also no.

Having spoken to the two founders, they acknowledge that one of their biggest issues with the site is its speed, for which they are of course trying to resolve (I feel their pain, and we don't run a complex flight search website!). This is down to the sheer amount of information a single search has to compile in an instant, from a litany of sources, and for a project of their size, this will take time to scale up.

This article is not a definitive piece, as there are some feature's I haven't covered, such as AI search, or the ability to store how many points you have in a wallet allowing your to keep track of your balances easier. But if I told you everything, you'd have nothing to explore.

Speaking for myself, as an "advanced" miles and points collector, there are elements of Ruma Travel that I like, such as the simplicity, but there are of course parts which I feel could be improved. In my opinion at least, it would be great to be able to control in your account settings a pence per point value that suits your personal valuation.

But Ruma Travel was designed to simplify the process of finding reward flights (like yours truly), and for once it's a service specifically aimed at Brits, and for that, I commend it.

You can visit Ruma Travel here and have a look for yourself.

Sam

Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.