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I'm loyal to several airlines, alliances and loyalty programs when I book flights — and for good reason. It's how I earn the points and miles that can pay for my next trip and help me reach elite status to enjoy perks like complimentary checked baggage, priority boarding and even the occasional upgrade.

The problem is that no single airline, or even airline alliance, flies to every destination I want to reach. That used to leave me with a frustrating and confusing process of piecing together a trip myself across a string of airline websites and browser tabs, cross-referencing layover times and baggage policies before calculating the total costs.

These days, I start with Skyscanner, which pulls together results from more than 1,000 travel providers in a single search. From figuring out where to go in the first place to tracking prices to booking accommodations, cars and flights, it's the closest thing I've found to a tool that actually covers the full journey while keeping my loyalty benefits intact.

Here's how I use it.

Related: Save with 1 search: How Skyscanner simplifies trip planning

How Skyscanner works across your whole trip

ANGUS MORDANT/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES When you don't know where you want to go: Explore Everywhere

Sometimes I know I want to travel, but I haven't landed on a destination. That used to mean an hour of Googling flight prices to a dozen cities before I'd find something that made sense for my budget and schedule.

Skyscanner's Explore Everywhere feature significantly cuts that process. Search from your home airport without a destination, and it maps out options with prices across the calendar, letting you find where your budget takes you rather than forcing you to pick first and price-check second.

Flights, accommodations and cars all in one place

Once I know where I'm going, I want to see the real cost of the trip, not just the flight. Skyscanner lets you search accommodations and car rentals alongside flights, which sounds simple but changes how you plan. You're not piecing together numbers from three different platforms; you're comparing the full trip picture before you commit to any of it.

For loyalty travelers, using Skyscanner to find flights works the same as booking directly: since Skyscanner searches traditional revenue tickets from more than 1,000 travel providers and sends you to book with the supplier, you'll still earn miles and keep your status perks.

Price Alerts: stop refreshing, start booking

One habit I've mostly broken: compulsively rechecking flight prices after I find a route I like. Skyscanner's Price Alerts let you set a watch on a specific route and get notified when prices move, which means you can step away from the search and trust that you'll know when it's time to book. For trips I'm planning weeks or months out, this has saved me a lot of wasted refresh cycles.

Beyond the booking: planning tools that actually help

JAROMIR/GETTY IMAGES Skyscanner's utility doesn't stop at search. Flexible Date Search is helpful when your dates are flexible, and you want to find the cheapest travel window. Flight Tracker is useful closer to departure, where you can track your flight to stay on top of delays, departure and arrival gates, check-in desks and even which belt your checked baggage will be delivered to.

There's also a data side worth knowing about. Skyscanner publishes travel insights, including its Smarter Summer Report and ongoing Travel Trends, which track where people are going, when prices tend to shift, and where value is emerging. For anyone who likes to plan with a little more information than gut instinct, it's a useful resource.

Multicity and self-transfer fares: what they are and why your loyalty is safe

Not everyone's travel is a simple round-trip with one airline. My travels have taken me across the globe from Finland to Fiji, and I'm often searching for complex itineraries that one airline, alliance or partnership might not be able to offer. Skyscanner has come to the rescue many times with neat multicity search results (on specific dates, or flexible ones), allowing me to fly into one city on one airline and out of another city on a different airline.

If you're planning a trip to Europe, it can be a huge time-saver not to have to backtrack to the city you flew in on just to fly back home.

Not everyone knows this, but Skyscanner also displays self-transfer fares right alongside regular results. These itineraries stitch together two or more flights, usually combining airlines that don't sell tickets together or aren't even partners — and because no single airline site will show you a route that relies on a carrier outside its network, Skyscanner is often the only place they appear. It clearly labels these fares and tells you in advance whether you'll need to switch airports, which is handy in cities like London, New York or Tokyo.

The loyalty question also comes up a lot, and the answer is better than most people expect. Unlike booking a flight directly through a third-party travel platform , Skyscanner helps you find the flight where you can still book directly with the airline, so you'll receive all perks and mileage earning as usual.

Bottom line

The best travel planning tool reduces chaos throughout the process, and Skyscanner does just that with destination discovery, flight and hotel and car comparison, price tracking and broader planning tools all in one place.

Plus, the destinations that don't show up on a single airline's website are often exactly the ones that Skyscanner's clever self-transfer fares can unlock.

By finding and combining flights from airlines that don't normally sell tickets together into one booking, I can reach places a single carrier can't get me to, keep my loyalty on the legs where it makes sense and earn points and miles on both flights when both are full-service airlines.

Whether you're a points maximizer or a flexible traveler chasing value, Skyscanner's worth making it your first stop.

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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Line up Arno Dorian, Jacob Frye, and Ezio Auditore, and they'd all have something Edward Kenway does not: being likeable blokes. The Welsh pirate was never meant to be a decent guy from the off. As an aimless drunk trying to find himself in the West Indies after royally fumbling the bag when it comes to his estranged wife back in Bristol, that offputting loser vibe was already there in the 2013 original. But it has to be said that while Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is an absolutely gorgeous and incredibly fun new game, it magnifies its protagonist's asshattery by dragging out his redemption arc for an unbearably long time.

I get it. We all love a rehabilitated bad boy, as anyone who plays dishonorable Arthur up to a certain point in Red Dead Redemption 2 will tell you. But, unlike a gruff outlaw atoning for his none-too-egregious sins at the dawn of a new world order, Black Flag Resynced gives me very little to root for in Edward. His personality traits are money, dubloons, and reales, and I am so very bored of it. How is it possible that over five hours and four sequences into the remake, I'm still rolling my eyes at a very two-dimensional anti-hero, waiting for the moment he starts feeling worth the emotional investment?

Ye olde frat bro

(Image credit: Ubisoft) Sail on

(Image credit: Ubisoft) Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review : "Far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original"

I've been trying to work out why I am so repulsed by Edward Kenway's character in Black Flag Resynced. Maybe I just hadn't noticed it before, and seeing such a faithful remake has exposed how simplistic the character has always been: from the faded leathers to the alcoholism, near-constant money-grubbing, and self-aggrandized dreams of rising above the derision he'd faced in the "old world", Edward is a stereotypical wannabe pirate. So much so, it starts to feel forced.

Others in the game recognize that. His friend Vane sneers at Edward’s twisted view of piracy, how he views it as a means to an end rather than an earnest movement for complete freedom from the shackles of Crown, Country, and Colony. James Kidd notes his equally shallow motives for dealing with Templars initially, Edward's interest piqued by the promise of a snazzy new get-up. There's also the matter of his most un-pirate-like commitment to his estranged wife back home. He intends to win her back with a fortune amassed as a temporary pirate, rendering him little more than a well-connected tourist in the West Indies.

Resynced does a great job of highlighting how hard Edward's intentions have been clocked from the start. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still righteous, Kidd remarks mildly, but it's clear that Edward's self-interest immediately grates on his companions very early on.

(Image credit: Ubisoft ) Only for me, it's not that early on. Six hours into Black Flag Resynced, Edward is still a goofy, greedy caricature of a peg-legged pirate, lacking only a Pretty Polly parrot on his shoulder squawking for a cracker. I'm starting to wonder if it's not the game that's making his simplistic bad boy era drag on for so long, but the way I'm approaching its new spatial parameters.

Thanks to being rebuilt in the powerful Anvil game engine, one of the most exciting tech advancements seen in Resynced is the seamless open world. As soon as I gain access to a ship of my own, I'm free to cut about Havana as I please – which means that I'm taking too long to get stuff done.

Too cool for charm school

(Image credit: Ubisoft) I don't know whether I love or hate Resynced's open world for being so good at its job that it makes an already unlikeable character even more of a tool

The original's tight, linear narrative pacing has been well and truly let off its leash in Resynced. There are plenty of islands to explore (though the maps therein are quite limited), a vast ocean I can freely dive into at any time for some treasure hunting, and I can even indulge in a spot of harpoon fishing when a compass marker pops up. Then there's sea shanties to collect after chasing down sheet music over rooftops, Helix glitches to explore alternate timelines, pirate contracts, brief in-world events, and a host of side quests after unlocking Edward's island hideout.

All this is excellent, because I adore exploring the best open world games and letting myself get sidetracked, yet I can already feel how it's damaging my journey through the story as a player. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not an RPG. I could storm all the main early-game quests (is six hours still early game?!) to keep myself on the straight and narrow, but am too much of a magpie not to get pulled off-course.

Why would I jump straight into the next mission when I could go climb every vantage point in sight, something I do in many of the best Assassin's Creed games to open the world up before I get stuck in? Resynced's biggest problem is that it trusts me, the player, far too much to let its story play out as intended. As a result, I'm dragging out the worst of its hero.

(Image credit: Ubisoft) Looking back at the stealth-action Assassin's Creed games, I don't recall ever feeling this much like a kid in a Havanaen candy shop. City-based Creeds have plenty of side quests, challenges, and collectibles, but the close-quarters element means I am never more than a few seconds away from fast-traveling to the nearest quest marker if I want to get back into the main story.

But as I set sail again for a distant island and pray to God I don't get swept up in another spot of naval warfare which was totally not my own fault, I realize that I have been intending to visit this map marker for the past thirty minutes to no avail. Resynced is almost too big and enticing to keep up the narrative momentum at times, meaning I am accidentally spending far longer in Edward Kenway's bastard era than I'd have liked. Help! My pirate game is too beautiful and distracting, and my lobster is too buttery!

I know that Edward Kenway's days in a pancake-flat pirate fantasy are numbered. His ego death is rapidly approaching, and embarking upon my first proper Templar Hunt, I am so very ready to see it. I don't know whether I love or hate Resynced's open world for being so good at its job that it makes an already unlikeable character even more of a tool, but I'm having such a good time getting lost in it that I can't even stay mad. Especially when, if I ever feel he is in need of karma points, I can send him out to feed chickens or pet cats to right the cosmic wrongs he inflicts upon myself and others (and his poor, poor wife).

Check out all the other upcoming Ubisoft games to anticipate next!

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Credit: Joe Maring / Android Authority

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T-Mobile has outlined future plans for the T-Life app in an official blog post.

The carrier says it’ll offer “richer account profiles and interest-based preferences” to deliver personalized benefits and experiences.

We’ve asked T-Mobile whether this data will be used for marketing purposes.

T-Mobile has been pushing its T-Life app hard in the last few months, to the point where all retail transactions at physical stores have to happen via it. The carrier has already issued a major T-Life update earlier this year, and it’s just revealed more details about upcoming additions.

T-Mobile outlined future plans for the T-Life app in an official blog post :