Redeem for Suites on Singapore Airlines

[Rigs]

Hi all,

I've been trying to spend some of my points balance with VA booking a codeshare in suites with Singapore Airlines to London and back. A couple of items keep frustrating my ability to redeem my points:

1. Manual Searching

I cant submit an email request to have someone actually look in the back end of the system for a redemption. Given how hard it would be to find two suites tickets at the same time on the same legs, its takes the agent hours to search day by day for the seats. Naturally, nothing is available during the dates they search. Ive spent a huge amount of time on the phone with VA trying to get this done and the phone team is hardly creative in helping me with the request. Doing this during business hours is a real pain.

2. Availability

Has anyone else noticed a significant drop in availability with Singapore Airlines?

I've spent years saving up these points to take my wife away in suites and they slowly decrease in value with no chance of me actually getting a booking.

Interested in people's experiences.

Cheers

Rigs

 

[ozstamps]

Age old problem. Getting more than 1 premium seat on high yield popular routes.

Was thus in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2019 .....................

SQ do not really care one iota if you have a gazillion Virgin miles accrued from Coles purchases, or ebay purchases, or credit card spend etc.

Try using United miles to do it - there are ZERO SQ Suites possible at any time, for even 1 person. At least using Virgin miles plenty of Biz seats are about - never with UA miles.

Indeed looking last week I was amazed how easy it was to get SQ Biz availability all across Asia and India etc for about 70,000 points plus a few bucks cash each way. DARN good value IMHO.

 

[blackcat20]

Have you thought about transferring the points to KF and booking directly with SQ? Though my understanding is that availability of reward seats for the new Suites is very limited.

 

[lewyVA]

Have you tried the free award flights google chrome extension? award.flights

I've found it really useful for finding SQ availability, although you need to sign up for Krisflyer and login for access.

 

[get me outta here]

If you have a 'gazillion points', you could look at an Advantage fare instead of a Saver.
Much more expensive points wise, but easier to get. Depends on your priorities.

 

[Bell21]

Have you thought about transferring the points to KF and booking directly with SQ? Though my understanding is that availability of reward seats for the new Suites is very limited.

That's good advice - I think it's pretty clear that KF offers much better availability when booking direct, so if you have an abundance of points, then you could consider transferring to KF, albeit with a notable drop in points value

Obviously find suite availability for 2 in before transferring (as even via KF that's likely to be challenging, depending on your date flexibility ) and consider asking if KF will hold your preferred reward flights before transferring

 

[Saltywings]

Hi all,

I've been trying to spend some of my points balance with VA booking a codeshare in suites with Singapore Airlines to London and back. A couple of items keep frustrating my ability to redeem my points:

1. Manual Searching

I cant submit an email request to have someone actually look in the back end of the system for a redemption. Given how hard it would be to find two suites tickets at the same time on the same legs, its takes the agent hours to search day by day for the seats. Naturally, nothing is available during the dates they search. Ive spent a huge amount of time on the phone with VA trying to get this done and the phone team is hardly creative in helping me with the request. Doing this during business hours is a real pain.

2. Availability

Has anyone else noticed a significant drop in availability with Singapore Airlines?

I've spent years saving up these points to take my wife away in suites and they slowly decrease in value with no chance of me actually getting a booking.

Interested in people's experiences.

Cheers

Rigs

I search for suites availability 'for fun' every few weeks with KVS tool which allows me to search entire 30-day blocks at a time (e.g. SIN-SYD from , and I can tell you that the new suites are for all intents and purposes blocked from awards (I have no KF status so can't comment for those who search with a more privileged account).

Don't think SQ availability as a whole has dropped - new suites aside I see tons of J/F availability on many days across the year and it's rare a date you want has no J/F availability that doesn't have another day with availability within +-7 days of your intended day (notwithstanding peaks, but even those periods sometimes yield availability).

A risky tactic some people use is to speculatively book an old F suite on the educated guesstimate that it will have been upgraded to a new A380 (and thus new suites) by the time the flight is flown. This is how a lot of initial bloggers have done it if you read their posts carefully.

 

[hossein_au]

Have you tried the free award flights google chrome extension? award.flights

I've found it really useful for finding SQ availability, although you need to sign up for Krisflyer and login for access.

Just so that I sleep better at night, I created a new KrisFlyer account with zero balance and I use that for searches using award.flights. I am just not comfortable giving 3rd parties access to my *real* account...

Ditto for QF, BA, etc (you can set up multiple accounts on award.flights for searches across alliances).