Award seat change rules

[Wheretonext]

Hi I am looking for some advice from the experienced Krisflyer members in this group. Details of my scenario is as follows:

• Made a booking with KrisFlyer on the 19th April 2025 for MEL-MUN flight leaving 30th May 2025
• No longer going as coughnal knocked out of CL so want to change my flight to come home IST-MEL on 3rd May 2026
• Spoke to the call centre and the adviser said they can't make the change as it is over a year from the date I booked it
• They advised if I cancel the flight I won't get my points back for up to 6 weeks
• When I got off the phone, I tried to test it on the app with a random booking MEL-MUN in May 2026 and it allowed me to change the flight and get to the review page (I didn't want to go any further in case it went ahead with booking)
• The booking will need to be changed by the call centre as I am changing routes so I am stuck with the pot luck of the agent I get

Is it true that you are unable to change a flight to a date more than a year from the date you made the booking eg 19th April 2025? Any advice will be appreciated as I need the points to make the change asap before flights are no longer available

 

[aikman]

17.d. All award tickets are valid for twelve months from the date of first issuance, unless otherwise specified.

KrisFlyer Terms and Conditions

 

[Wheretonext]

KrisFlyer Terms and Conditions

Thanks so does that mean if I move to the next screen on the app after review it won't book it? As it isn't restricting to make the change on the app to a later date over 12 months

Would a workaround be to make a change to a random date in Feb 2026 and then that will refresh the 12 month restriction? Or is it still govern by the first date. Thanks

 

[aikman]

Thanks so does that mean if I move to the next screen on the app after review it won't book it? As it isn't restricting to make the change on the app to a later date over 12 months

Would a workaround be to make a change to a random date in Feb 2026 and then that will refresh the 12 month restriction? Or is it still govern by the first date. Thanks

If I understand correctly, you are changing your city of origin. This cannot be done online.

The date of issue on the ticket cannot be changed. The only way is to cancel it.

During covid they allowed date changes beyond 12 months. This required cancelling the original ticket and issuing a new ticket which they did for free because of the circumstances.

 

[dajop]

IST-MEL is in a different zone anyway. It costs more points if booked as advantage award but less if booked as saver award (4,000 less for economy, 27K less if PE, 31.5K less if business). You will have to cancel and rebook.

The main issue would be if the points you originally used would have expired already by the time you cancel and redeposit into your account (I.e if the points expired in April) - you wouldn’t get any back. Also higher penalty for cancel/redeposit - $75 USD vs $25USD for date change.

Anecdotal evidence suggests cancelling online results in fairly quick redeposit of points (day or two) whilst cancelling with agent over the phone can take some time.

You could, if doing over phone and they won’t let you change exisiting ticket, request to hold the IST-MEL sector whilst waiting for the points to go back into your account. Not sure if they would agree to this for someone without status.

 

[Wheretonext]

If I understand correctly, you are changing your city of origin. This cannot be done online.

The date of issue on the ticket cannot be changed. The only way is to cancel it.

Yes I understand that the change will need to be done over the phone due to the change of origin. To clarify, what I am trying to do is change my current MEL-MUC economy booking to IST-DPS, IST-DAD or IST-MEL business on the first week of May 2026 depending on availability.

IST-MEL is in a different zone anyway. It costs more points if booked as advantage award but less if booked as saver award (4,000 less for economy, 27K less if PE, 31.5K less if business). You will have to cancel and rebook.

The main issue would be if the points you originally used would have expired already by the time you cancel and redeposit into your account (I.e if the points expired in April) - you wouldn’t get any back. Also higher penalty for cancel/redeposit - $75 USD vs $25USD for date change.

The points difference will actually be in my favour if I pick on of the South East Asian destinations as it will cost me 56,500 points in Saver. There is no issues with my points expiring as I only transferred over my Velocity points to Krisflyer in April 2025 when making this booking originally.

I have made a dummy change of my booking on the website to see if the restriction they are saying is correct. It allowed me to change my flight to a MEL-MUC flight on 5th May 2026.


So this proves that it is allowed when done via the website or app but now I need to work out how I can get the call centre to do it. Maybe I just need to play call centre lotto and hope to get to someone that can make it happen.