First time Krisflyer user without many clues.

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snowbones

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Myself +1 am going SYD-LON MIL-SYD next year in May. Having read the forums I am still completely baffled re the best way to try to book business seats with Krisflyer miles that don't cost 1000K miles per seat. Total newbie question but many thanks for those that take pity on me or push me in the right direction.
 
Look at Suites as well as business class Savers. Try for one person and then two seats.
 
Also, unless planning a stopover in SIN, book each direction as separate ticket , is probably simplest.

If availability out of Milan is a problem, look at other SQ ports and consider finding a cheap way of getting to them from Milan the night before you want to depart ( eg Zurich or Rome via train, other ports via Easyjet - which has a hub at Milan).
 
Firstly welcome to AFF snowbones - certainly hope you enjoy your time here.

First thing you are going to need to do is familiarise yourself with the KF One Way Saver Award Chart - I'll save you looking for it and post it for you - here ya go - https://www.singaporeair.com/pdf/ppsclub_krisflyer/charts/SQMI_OneWayAwardCharts.pdf

Now you can see what Business Class (J) seats actually cost pts wise to / fro europe. Study the chart and then ask away any further Qs you might have.
 
Look out of Melbourne as well as there are fewer people competing for seats but don't take any that Cruiser needs.
 
I have never needed to use wait lists because I click on the flights that are available and make sure the connections are over 2 hours apart. The other thing is don't have a hire car booked if you are doing the drinks on the long haul. If you do that in the US you could get a cell as a result.
Getting a great flight and great connections are all part of flying in the best style so ending up with a 12 hour wait with no room would be a problem that I avoid.
 
Welcome to AFF,

I had a quick search and there are saver two business class seats (190,000 less 15% if you book online, total cost for two people) for 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 May (I only looked at the first 10 days of May) so there appears no issues getting to Europe early May.

On the return from MIL?, which I assume you are referring to Milan which correctly is MXP, I could not find any saver seats for the last week of May, although there are several other cities nearby which you could easily access, as dajop mentioned, such as Zurich, Rome ... also further afield such as Paris, Frankfurt, Barcelona.

Throwing this into the mix, it's a bit further but probably worthwhile is if you fly out of AMS. Flying out of AMS means you pay 160,000 points versus 190,000 points for other European ports. There are two business class saver availability ex-AMS on 27/5 and 2/6 if that could work for you.
 
Also consider fly in and out of AMS. For some reason AMS is categorized as Europe 2 even tho distance wise it is about the same as LHR and CDG. With business saver, it is only 68000 miles each way (after 15% online discount) from Australian capital city. You can go to London easily with train.

If your credit cards allow you to transfer to Enrich program, you can consider flying MH if you don't mind, it is way cheaper only 51000 miles one way in business and the award availability is wide open.

I won't blindly wait on waitlist unless you have a plan B.
 
Also consider fly in and out of AMS. For some reason AMS is categorized as Europe 2 even tho distance wise it is about the same as LHR and CDG. With business saver, it is only 68000 miles each way (after 15% online discount) from Australian capital city. You can go to London easily with train.

If your credit cards allow you to transfer to Enrich program, you can consider flying MH if you don't mind, it is way cheaper only 51000 miles one way in business and the award availability is wide open.

I won't blindly wait on waitlist unless you have a plan B.

I think AMS is Europe 2 because of the types of aircraft which fly there!
 
Thanks all, booking now sorted. Special thanks
dajob - coming home via Zurich, train from Milan
cove - going via Melbourne because my wife said
 
I am not sure if people still follow this thread, but I thought I post a question here first instead of creating a new thread. I am thinking (hoping) to book an award return flight from Australia to Europe. I gather it is a Zone 9 to Zone 12 (based on their redemption chart). Considering they partner with VA, would I be able to have a domestic tag flight here and in Europe? I am based in CBR and I want to go to, say, Hannover (Germany). Could a CBR-SYD or CBR-MEL on VA be part of the redemption? What about, say, FRA-HAJ on LH?
 
Can't speak for the FRA-HAJ but I have found that you can't book from Canberra with SQ as a reward. I guess the CBR - SYD, CBR- MEL is not part of their codeshare or whatever. Depending on where your points are VA vs SQ and what your trying to book J vs F this is one of the cases where an Etihad redemption may be better 125,000 one way CBR-SYD or MEL or BNE to FRA with no fuel charges.
 
Can't speak for the FRA-HAJ but I have found that you can't book from Canberra with SQ as a reward. I guess the CBR - SYD, CBR- MEL is not part of their codeshare or whatever. Depending on where your points are VA vs SQ and what your trying to book J vs F this is one of the cases where an Etihad redemption may be better 125,000 one way CBR-SYD or MEL or BNE to FRA with no fuel charges.

AFAIK, any itinerary involving even a single segment not operated by SQ or Silk Air is deemed to be a partner award. This has a few negative consequences:
- more expensive redemption rates
- no online booking
- no 15% discount for online booking

So even if you could add the VA CBR-SYD flight, it probably wouldn't be worth it.
 
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Thanks guys. I'll call SQ to enquire about FRA-HAJ leg. My points are currently with VA, but I have not been able to find suitable EY flights whilst SQ is wide open for the times I'm interested in. Depending on the result of the call to SQ and whether I can find something suitable with EY, I might bite the bullet, transfer the points to SQ, and book something in the next couple of days.
 
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Thanks guys. I'll call SQ to enquire about FRA-HAJ leg. My points are currently with VA, but I have not been able to find suitable EY flights whilst SQ is wide open for the times I'm interested in. Depending on the result of the call to SQ and whether I can find something suitable with EY, I might bite the bullet, transfer the points to SQ, and book something in the next couple of days.

Have you checked EY availability using the EY site? Quite often virgin may come back with nothing online , but seats may be available.

If you find availability on EY then just try ringing Virgin
 
Have you checked EY availability using the EY site? Quite often virgin may come back with nothing online , but seats may be available.

If you find availability on EY then just try ringing Virgin

I haven't used EY site directly, but I did call VA and they could not see any availability in F/J for +/-3 days around the dates I am interested in :-( I'll keep an eye on EY site as well. Thanks for the info.
 
I think AMS is Europe 2 because of the types of aircraft which fly there!

Hi burmans. Query - what do you mean by the types of aircraft which fly there? I've booked SQ J to AMS on 777-300ER and I thought this was a good aircraft? Could you please clarify. Cheers. Suz

Follow up - just checked SQ website and you're correct, they're currently running 777-200 to/from AMS, however by the time my flight comes up, looks like they're changing over to 777-300ER (well for now anyway.....). Will see how we go. :)
 
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Booked onto SQ218 early May, thanks again for the help. I knew the plane had changed from 777-300ER to -300 some time ago via seat selection changes.

Got an interesting phone call from SQ notifying me of the change 2 days ago. At the time of the call I was a bit distracted pretending to be an ambulance which may have contributed to the offer of a considerable voucher in Singapore dollars x2 that will be presented at check in. Just curious if this is normal practice.
We did have our entire travel plans cancelled in January by SQ due "computer error" for which they (SQ) were very, very apologetic.
 
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