Websites consider your miles, memberships in flight searches

— -- A new wave of rewards-oriented flight-search sites is taking it personal.

Unlike classic travel comparison sites such as Kayak and Bing Travel, which don't take your rewards programs into account, Superfly.com, MileWise.com and others are doing just that.

Visit the Superfly and MileWise websites, enter your account numbers and passwords for your various rewards programs, then the two sites will keep an updated tally of your miles and display flight choices, emphasizing the best value for you.

If you live in Atlanta and have Medallion status as a Delta SkyMiles frequent flier or if you fly out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as a US Airways Dividend Miles member at the Gold level, the search results for the same query will appear differently based on your rewards programs and status.

The two sites take somewhat different approaches in finding which flight makes the most sense for the individual flier.

Superfly emphasizes the best value in your flight choices based on the fare and your expected rewards' accruals, while MileWise presents the best value available in your flight alternatives and focuses on whether you should pay cash or use miles or points to redeem the flight.

MileWise also recommends methods to redeem your rewards.

Once tentative flight selections are made, Superfly directs you to Expedia to make the booking, while MileWise relies on Orbitz.

If you belong to both Delta SkyMiles and American Airlines' AAdvantage and use Superfly to search for an Atlanta-San Francisco round trip Jan. 3-6, you can sort results by "value" and may see, depending on your status in the programs, that a Delta flight would be the better deal with a $322 net cost ($402 price minus $80 in rewards). In contrast, an American flight with a similar itinerary would be costlier from a price-rewards standpoint, with a $356 cost ($427 price minus $71 in rewards).

However, sometimes a flight with a higher fare would provide a better value if the rewards were greater than in the lower-price flight.

For example, opting for an American Newark-to-Beijing round trip Jan. 3-17 ($1,641 fare minus $233 rewards, for a $1,408 cost) wins over a $1,525 Korean Air flight with zero rewards if you don't belong to Korean Air's Skypass, Superfly shows.

With MileWise, on the other hand, if you belong to both Delta SkyMiles and Continental OnePass, and search for a Newark-to-Houston round trip, Jan. 3-6, MileWise ranks all the flights by their value and may recommend that you buy a Delta flight for a $295 fare, minus a $52 reward, for a $243 cost. A Continental flight with a similar itinerary was shown to have a less attractive $341 cost.

Where MileWise goes the extra mile is in presenting strategies for redeeming miles to book the flight or transferring points from credit card to mileage programs to purchase the flight.

On the Delta Newark-to-Houston round trip, MileWise advises that instead of paying cash, you could redeem 32,500 SkyMiles or 29,500 Citi points (if you had them) for the trip. Or, you could transfer 33,000 American Express Membership Rewards to Delta SkyMiles to book a different pair of Delta flights.

One MileWise shortcoming vs. Superfly is that it doesn't display American flights or update AAdvantage miles, which Superfly does. (Neither shows Southwest Airlines flights.)