Singapore Airlines is offering business class saver awards on its non-stop flights between the U.S. and Singapore out of New York JFK, Newark, and San Francisco for at least two passengers through much of the year.
You’ll find the space form now through end of schedule, so you can pick whatever time works best for you and the vagaries of immigration-restricting authorities to visit Southeast Asia. This deal was first spotted by Thrifty Traveler‘s premium airfare deal alert service.
In Newark and San Francisco you can use United’s Polaris lounges. The product includes lie flat seats, generally excellent service, and “Book the Cook” where you choose in advance what the airline will have for you to eat on board if you wish.
I picked one of these routes at random, for a random month, to share what a calendar of availability would look like. Note that Newark – Singapore is the world’s longest flight but it is not currently a Vaccinated Travel Lane flight that exempts from quarantine (San Francisco and New York JFK are). Of course we don’t know what rules will look like late in the year.
In order to book these flights you need Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles. The airline doesn’t make the awards available to partner airlines. For the Newark and New York JFK flights you’ll pay 99,000 miles each way. For San Francisco it’s 95,000 miles.
Most of you have access to Singapore Airlines miles since the Krisflyer program is a transfer partner of all of the major bank transferable currencies – Chase, Amex, Citi, Capital One, and Brex.
Since Singapore is a member of Star Alliance, it’s possible to include United Airlines domestic award seats to get to and from these flights in the U.S. using their Star Alliance award chart. It’s also possible to book connections beyond Singapore.
My current bet is that Singapore will be open to most Americans at some point this year, and that in any case it’ll be possible to connect there to various tourist destinations like Thailand and Vietnam. It’ll be a good idea to check whether your CDC vaccination card converts to a SMART health card (depends where you were vaccinated) to be eligible to use current vaccinated travel lanes for Singapore entry.
This has been available for several weeks. I wonder what triggers the alert from that service.
@Omar
What has been available? I just looked yesterday and there wasn’t availability and now at the beginning of March there is.
Not much “vagaries of immigration-restricting authorities” for Singapore anymore. You’ll have to be vaccinated, of course, as all the SQ flights from the US are Vaccinated Travel Lane flights. But other than that, the government announced today lifting of almost all other travel restrictions to Singapore. You’ll have to take a monitored ART test within 2 days of your departure, then swing by a test site in your first 24 hours in Singapore to take another monitored ART test. And that’s it. No quarantine, no PCR tests, no VTP permits or any other required travel documentation.
From Singapore, there’s still quite a few restrictions in other Southeast Asian countries. Reportedly Cambodia is easy, and seeing Angkor Wat with only a few other visitors is an incredible thing. Sri Lanka is another destination that people are reporting with few restrictions and easy access. Thailand keeps changing its various sandbox criteria such that I can’t really keep up. Bali is supposedly reopened, but there’s still a 3 day inbound hotel quarantine.
Come on out! Things are opening back up
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-hong-kong-vtl-bintan-batam-quotas-restored-increased-2501801?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&fbclid=IwAR1nPC1ZPQZg54OvS-oCjCyiU6VBYLemIi_jx1LL06_OGPf4Py5ixqKNyPA
I believe the *G promo is running through the end of this month. Good if one is going to transfer points to SQ in any event. Google for more details.
Just a few hours ago SQ announced new VTL routes and EWR is one beginning March 27. I got my tickets! Singapore and Malaysia adventure awaits this summer.
What are the best ways to use miles/points for SQ premium class redemptions? ALso, SQ has good service, but their business class seats really suck.
Thanks,
My Cathay Focused May RTW22 1.0 is doubleful so I had backed up on SQ JFK-SIN Nonstop (why not try the longest flight, eh?) but at Std award so just changed for basiclly $50 redeposit fee, I netted 41,000 KrisfLyer miles which will come in handy next year for an acual overnight stay at the Sands and do the Super Trees and Cloud Mountain again visit
ON Nov RTW22 3.0 doing 3 segments in SQ First suites SYD-SIN-FRA-JFK “Only 3 rows available, sir,”” said the CSR when I reserved it while points moved Took 295,000 Kflr miles :-0
BTW Doing QF First LAX-SYD 🙂
So transferrng that many miles to SQ now makes me SQ Gold! 🙂