Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is raising award prices effective January 24.
- This matters to US frequent flyers because Singapore is a transfer partner of Chase, Citibank, American Express, and Capital One
- The cost of Singapore Airlines (and SilkAir) flights is going up, the cost of Star Alliance awards is not changing at this time.
The change focuses on business and first class awards.
- Business class awards between the US and Singapore go up 7000 miles each way
- First class awards between the US and Singapore go up 10,000 – 12,000 miles each way
Here are the relevant changes for US non-stop routes, priced each way:
| Before | After | Increase | |||||
| US West Coast | Singapore | Business | 88,000 | 95,000 | 7,000 | ||
| (LAX/SFO/SEA) | First | 118,000 | 130,000 | 12,000 | |||
| San Francisco | Hong Kong | Business | 82,000 | 89,000 | 7,000 | ||
| First | 92,000 | 104,000 | 12,000 | ||||
| Los Angeles | Tokyo | Business | 85,000 | 92,000 | 7,000 | ||
| First | 95,000 | 107,000 | 12,000 | ||||
| US East Coast | Singapore | Business | 92,000 | 99,000 | 7,000 | ||
| (JFK/EWR/IAH) | First | 120,000 | 132,000 | 12,000 | |||
| New York JFK/Houston | Europe | Business | 65,000 | 72,000 | 7,000 | ||
| First | 76,000 | 86,000 | 10,000 |
Singapore KrisFlyer does not add fuel surcharges to awards on Singapore flights. However the award chart isn’t inexpensive to begin with — they raised prices two years ago when they dropped fuel surcharges, and dropped the 15% online redemption discount as well.
Price increased like this are never good. Whether they’re material is up to you, personally I won’t find I’ll use the program any differently. I do wish they would give more than three weeks’ notice of the changes however.
(HT: One Mile at a Time)
Makes me a lot less likely to redeem on them especially after a mediocre C experience on the SQ IAH-MAN a few weeks ago. (Let’s put It this way—The Polaris Lounge at IAH was the best part of the total experience.) Frankly I was already thinking a Y redemption at a third the miles is a better value than what I saw a few weeks ago on this C SQ flight.
The short JFK-FRA flight for now 72k in C will definitely take this out of consideration for any transatlantic trip for me.