KrisFlyer by Singapore Airways is likely one of the hottest Worldwide Frequent Flyer programme for Indians as you may switch factors from lots of the Indian Credit score Playing cards like HDFC, CITI, AXIS & HSBC to KrisFlyer.

Whereas the try is to focus on among the in style routes, they needn’t be the perfect of the redemptions for everybody, as one program doesn’t swimsuit all and for all routes.

In case you’re new right here, please take a look at the Intro to airmiles article for higher understanding. Right here’s every little thing you’ll want to know concerning the Singapore Airways KrisFlyer program as an Indian,

Overview

Singapore Airways is famend for its luxurious Enterprise and Top notch cabins and is a wonderful selection for Indians touring to Southeast Asian nations.

Why KrisFlyer?

There are two issues that make for an excellent flight.

1. The laborious product, that means the objects that can’t be simply modified, such because the seat.
2. The delicate product, which is the meals, facilities and repair.

Within the case of Singapore Airways, each merchandise are good and rated among the finest merchandise out within the sky.

Vast physique planes are most well-liked for medium and lengthy haul flights and what higher airline to decide on than SQ which is the “first” airline to fly the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787. It has a giant fleet of extensive physique’s Boeing 777 & 787, Airbus 380 & 350, and so on

Membership Tiers

There are three membership tiers with KrisFlyer as above and the actual profit like lounge entry kicks in solely with Gold tier. Right here’s the whole record of tier advantages.

Whereas attending to Gold tier is sort of powerful, SQ just lately ran one-of-a-kind promo that might get you to Gold/Silver tiers on switch of X quantity of KrisFlyer miles from bank card switch companions.

Such promotions are uncommon and was doable earlier than due to the Covid scene however we will count on some kind of “bonus factors” provide as a substitute.

Taxes & YQ

One of the crucial necessary issue when analysing a proper airline loyalty program is the tax part.

Singapore airways doesn’t go on carrier-imposed charges, typically referred to as gas surcharges (YQ). The taxes on redemption are fairly nominal on Singapore Airways.

Nonetheless, it needs to be famous that taxes for redeeming associate airline flights are steep, because the gas surcharge (YQ) is handed on to the shopper.

Incomes KrisFlyer Miles

1. Axis Credit score Playing cards: Magnus, Reserve & Atlas are the preferred bank cards within the nation in the mean time to earn KrisFlyer miles.
2. Citi Credit score Playing cards: Premier Miles and Status are fairly good so long as it lasts.
3. HDFC Credit score Playing cards: Whereas Infinia & Diners black are good, it’s not sensible to make use of these playing cards for miles transfers, because the earn price will not be that nice as Axis playing cards.
4. Amex Playing cards: Whereas Amex permits transfers to SQ, earn price is so poor and it’s often higher to keep away from.
5. HSBC Playing cards: Whereas it’s principally reserved for Taj (Neu Cash), it may possibly as effectively be transferred to SQ.

Whereas the record possibly huge, most cardholders want the Axis Magnus Credit score Card due to it’s engaging milestone advantages.

Redeeming KrisFlyer Miles

To make use of  KrisFlyer miles for award flights, you’ll must login to your KrisFlyer account. As soon as logged in, go to the “e-book flights” tab. Be certain that to pick out the “Redeem Flights” choice to seek for award flights.

Right here’s a pattern award seat seek for your reference:

You will note two sorts for fares,

1. Saver
2. Benefit

Saver award fares require much less variety of miles in comparison with Benefit. Saver can be laborious to return by until you propose to e-book the flights prematurely (at-least 1 month) on many of the in style routes.

Be aware: Singapore’s award chart is predicated on 13 zones and every zone requires a unique variety of miles. Right here is the chart on your reference.

Cease Overs

• Validity of award tickets: 12 months

Please confer with desk for cease over necessities. Two separate redemption bookings might be required for stopovers of greater than 30 days for award redemption tickets issued on or after 1 August 2022.

Many travellers visiting locations like Bali may also be keen on exploring Singapore throughout their journey. In these instances, StopOvers could be a priceless possibility.

Improve Award Seats

SQ miles can be put to good use by upgrading income ticket. Please be aware that one you may solely improve to subsequent cabin. The miles required for improve is predicated on the fare class booked.

Please confer with under SQ calculator for the route you want to know.

That apart, we will’t improve a SQ Associate airline ticket utilizing KrisFlyer miles.

Cancellation / Date Change

Fees for date change and cancellation are very cheap for KrisFlyer program as proven under.

Toddler Ticket

Toddler passengers are issued what’s termed an ‘Toddler-in-Lap’ or ‘Lap Toddler’ ticket. This ticket have to be tagged to a reserving reference variety of an grownup (>18 years outdated) touring on the identical flight. An grownup can solely have one toddler tagged to him/her.

If you’re making your award redemption on the SQ web site, you’ll not be capable of purchase an toddler ticket on-line. Merely make your redemption reserving as regular.

When you’re achieved and have a confirmed ticket, name up SQ KrisFlyer and supply your reserving reference quantity and clarify that you simply wish to add on an Toddler-in-Lap ticket to your reserving.

Miles required are sometimes 10% of the miles required for grownup reserving. Its advisable to examine with SQ upfront to know the precise miles requirement for including toddler.

Associate Redemptions

Singapore Airline is a part of Star Alliance and it has tons of companions, nevertheless as talked about earlier than, it does go on gas prices whereas redeeming miles on companions.

So count on to pay excessive taxes on these redemption’s. Nonetheless, some choices are fairly good to discover as miles required is fairly first rate. We’ll see some examples later within the article.

Household Pooling

This ‘household pooling’ characteristic permits mother and father to entry the KrisFlyer miles of their kids in order that the mother and father can benefit from the miles earned on little one’s account.

Nonetheless, that’s not helpful for many because the definition of household pooling with SQ is extra between Mum or dad-Youngster, want it’s lot broader. Undecided the way it’s helpful in actuality although.

Be aware that transferring different members CC factors to your a/c will not be allowed (switch will get reversed and an alert e-mail will get despatched as effectively) and your KrisFlyer account would possibly even get blocked if repeated makes an attempt are achieved.

Redeeming for others

A member might nominate as much as 5 people as nominees at anybody time to be in his/her Redemption Group. A toddler or toddler nominee is handled the identical as an grownup.

Members might substitute or delete nominees of their Redemption Group for a flat payment, whatever the variety of modifications or deletions.

As soon as a change or deletion has been carried out, additional modifications or deletions to the Redemption Group can solely be carried out after six months.

There isn’t a payment for including new nominees to a Redemption Group

Waitlist

In case you’re trying to find award seats, you would possibly as effectively come throughout the “waitlist” standing. This implies your reserving goes to the queue and it might or might not get cleared.

The idea behind that is that award seats are inclined to open up nearer to departure (1-2 weeks prior), and being on the waitlist saves you from having to maintain checking.

Listed below are some key factors:

• You will need to have ample miles so as to add your self to the waitlist
• No miles are deducted when becoming a member of the waitlist
• Waitlists are open up until three weeks earlier than departure. All unfilled waitlists might be routinely cancelled two weeks earlier than departure
• Ought to the waitlist clear, you’ll often have 72 hours to substantiate your reserving. There isn’t a obligation to take action.
• Waitlist clears inside one month of departure
• Elite standing improves your probabilities of clearing the waitlist.

However typically waitlist on SQ will not be a sensible possibility for many.

Spontaneous Escapes

Singapore Airways provides Spontaneous Escapes promo each now and again, whereby we will get vital financial savings (30%) on award tickets in choose areas.

It’s a “Promo” fare and so it comes with it’s personal disadvantages like: non-cancellable, non-changeable ticket. It additionally doesn’t enable stop-over even on roundtrip awards.

Nevertheless it’s nonetheless the best option to scale back your miles requirement, helpful for these with confirmed plans.

KrisShop, Vrooms & Pelago

There are occasions once you don’t have any plans or your miles are expiring, you may contemplating utilizing the miles for purchasing, reserving resort or experiences. Right here’s a fast look into the identical.

• KrisShop: You possibly can store devices on KrisShop portal utilizing Miles. Getting something above 50ps per mile is often laborious.
• Vrooms: This service helps to e-book resort rooms utilizing KrisFlyer miles. Attempt to use for motels provided that you get a worth of 50ps per mile.
• Pleago: This service helps to e-book native experiences like excursions and extra utilizing KrisFlyer miles. Whereas we did discover this up to now, its laborious to get worth greater than 40ps per mile for the Pelago experiences.

In the course of the pandemic, I used to be in a scenario the place I felt I must burn some miles off after which I noticed a sale on apple merchandise. I went forward and bought apple SE watch which gave an approximate worth of 65ps per level which I felt was a great deal.

I had this merchandise shipped to US as there wasn’t any customized obligation to USA under $800.

Redemption Concepts

SE Asia

Be aware: You’re seeing factors required for A technique saver awards. Benefit awards are within the vary of 37K (economic system) & 65K (enterprise) miles for the talked about routes.

As you may see above, it requires identical quantity of miles to fly from India to Singapore (or) to different SE asian nations (REP/SGN/HAN/MNL).

So the perfect thought is often to e-book a round-trip saver award and put one cease over in SIN as a way to discover 2 nations in a visit.

Be aware:

• Within the above instance, you could substitute BOM with some other metropolis in India from the place SQ flies, like MAA/BLR/HYD.
• You may additionally substitute SGN with different airports in SE asian nations like Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, and so on.

SE asian routes are the popular ones for most individuals exploring air-miles as a newbie, as a result of its comparatively straightforward to earn these many miles and it’s additionally finest for household travellers as one can discover upto 4 biz class award seats in these sectors, which is usually uncommon within the trade.

Australia / New Zealand

This can be a nice program to go to both of those nations and extra so for New Zealand as there are not any higher choices to go to New Zealand from India.

Good factor is you’ll find as much as 3 award seats even in Enterprise class for these routes. The supply for SYD is fairly good throughout the yr however AKL is often powerful until you e-book few months prematurely.

UK

Whereas the choices are first rate, the issue is one must goto Singapore to take these flights, which seems like an undesirable roundtrip for many Indians.

So in such instances, associate redemptions are helpful, some examples on that later.

USA

SQ does function a direct flight to New York (JFK) from its base in Singapore however discovering availability is tough and you’ll want to e-book prematurely to essentially discover saver awards. Miles required for west coast (LAX/SEA/SFO) is sort of cheap as effectively.

However typically it’s not straightforward to seek out greater than 2 saver awards on the US routes.

Total its a good way to journey to USA utilizing KrisFlyer miles, I imagine miles required are first rate and the tax could be very cheap. Sooner you propose, probabilities of getting saver award is increased.

Private Expertise

Listed below are some private experiences with SQ by Puneet,

Asia:

Whereas I haven’t taken SQ flights to Asia, this program is likely one of the finest and most well-liked ones for journeys like Bali, Vietnam and so on and doing a stopover in Singapore.

I’ve seen as much as 4 enterprise and economic system award saver seats accessible for this route and it’s a good way to have a household journey with first rate stability of miles accrued from card spends.

UK:

I’ve personally travelled to UK again in 2019 on Swiss air enterprise class (associate) redeemed utilizing Kris Flyer miles. The expertise wasn’t nice, and it was underwhelming.

Many of the star alliance companions like Lufthansa and Swiss air fly out of Delhi.

Miles required for Delhi to Zurich (associate redemptions),

• Economic system roundtrip  Saver award : 61,000 miles  +  INR 16,815
• Enterprise roundtrip  Saver award : 123,000 miles  +  INR 18,369

One other choice to Europe is to take AirIndia direct flights which can be a Star Alliance associate.

Miles required for Bombay to London (associate redemptions),

• Economic system roundtrip  Saver award on AI: 61,000 miles  +  INR 16,729
• Enterprise roundtrip  Saver award on AI: 123,000 miles  +  INR 27,143

That is fairly on the upper facet and we now have different Star Alliance packages which can price much less miles and tax for a similar route and we are going to discuss this within the coming articles.

Because the star alliance has a really huge record of companions, the award redemptions covers virtually the whole world, one can e-book intra Europe flights like Paris to Zurich or a Sydney or Auckland.

USA:

I’ve personally taken the lengthy path to US alongside the east coast, Ahmedabad -> Singapore -> Frankfrut -> Newyork on enterprise class.

Whereas it’s not the optimum option to attain US with an extended layover in Singapore, being my first expertise with SQ I actually loved each the delicate and laborious product as effectively the “Ebook the Cook dinner” choice to prebook a few of their signature dishes.

For lengthy haul, SQ principally makes use of widebody planes, Boeing 777, Airbus A350 and A380 and its at all times a nice expertise flying enterprise class on these merchandise.

We are going to cease right here with among the above examples which we imagine will assist many of the people to get began and plan for hottest routes.

Assist

You could join with Singapore Airways KrisFlyer staff by under cellphone strains.

• 1800 121212 (native calls)
• +91 22 501 66046 (calls from exterior India)

Backside line

The Singapore Airways KrisFlyer program is undoubtedly an incredible possibility for Indians exploring close by overseas nations in fashion, because the factors requirement for enterprise class award seats are truthful sufficient.

That mentioned, it could be good if we now have some co-branded bank cards with Singapore Airways in India simply as they’ve a couple of in Japan, Malaysia and few different nations.

Have you ever flown Singapore Airways or it’s companions? Be happy to share your experiences within the feedback under.