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The Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program has many advantages. In addition to excellent award availability and no fuel surcharges on Singapore Airlines award flights, the program also has some interesting award chart sweet spots. One such sweet spot is the KrisFlyer “Middle East, North Africa” zone.
We’ve already shown you how you can take advantage of the KrisFlyer award chart to fly Business Class from Dubai to London for just 29,000 KrisFlyer miles. But there’s more to this sweet spot…
KrisFlyer’s “Middle East, North Africa” zone
It costs 117,500 KrisFlyer miles to fly from Australia to Europe in Business Class with Star Alliance. This is already quite reasonable, but you can get (almost) to Europe for 29,500 miles less than this by flying into the “Middle East, North Africa” zone.
It costs just 88,000 KrisFlyer miles to fly from Australia to the Middle East, North Africa zone. This is interesting because this region is massive and covers many destinations that are just a short flight away from Europe. Here is a list of countries included in this zone:
Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
The KrisFlyer Middle East, North Africa zone includes destinations such as Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Casablanca, Marrakech, Cairo, Larnaca, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha. From Casablanca, for example, it takes less than two hours to fly to Lisbon or Madrid. Similarly, Istanbul is just a short direct flight from most cities across eastern Europe. So if you don’t have enough KrisFlyer miles to fly all the way to Europe – or just want to save a few miles – consider flying to one of these destinations instead!
It’s even cheaper if you live in Perth and fly Singapore Airlines to Istanbul. In this case, you’ll pay just 70,500 miles one-way. (The price has increased since the below screenshot was taken.)
Some itinerary examples
Provided there is award availability on Singapore Airlines or its Star Alliance partners, any itinerary from Australia or New Zealand to any destination in the Middle East/North Africa zone will cost 88,000 KrisFlyer miles. Below are some itinerary examples we found on the Singapore Airlines website (note that the price has increased from 78,000 to 88,000 KrisFlyer miles since these screenshots were taken).
You can also depart from New Zealand (or even somewhere in the Pacific Islands, for that matter).
This trick also works with Economy class. For example, you could fly from Wellington to Marrakech for just 47,000 KrisFlyer miles. (But for a journey of this length, it would be worth paying the extra miles to fly Business!)
Don’t forget that you can also get a free stopover and a free open-jaw with KrisFlyer awards. So you could, for example, fly from Sydney to Amman with a stopover in Singapore on the way, then return from Casablanca back to Sydney on the same ticket. This would all cost just 176,000 KrisFlyer miles for Business Class.
Flying to Europe? Stopover and save 500 KrisFlyer miles
One more thing… it normally costs 117,500 KrisFlyer miles to fly Business Class from Australia to Europe. But it costs 88,000 miles to fly to the Middle East/North Africa, and 29,000 miles to fly from there to Europe in Business. That’s a total cost of 117,000 miles – 500 miles less than flying all the way to Europe on one ticket!
So if you’re flying to Europe with KrisFlyer miles, why not stop over somewhere interesting like Dubai, Cairo, Tbilisi, Muscat or Beirut?
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