It was inevitable that Singapore Airlines were going to devalue Krisflyer. Given the surge in travel over the last few months and the numerous promotions Krisflyer rolled out to keep members loyal and entice them to build up their mileage balances – also helping SIA to maintain a nice healthy cashflow by selling miles – it was simply a matter of when not if Krisflyer award rates would be increased. Besides the increase in award rates, the $100 stopover trick has also been eliminated. The changes in award rates take effect from 5 July 2022, so there’s still a few weeks to lock in redemptions at the current rates. Note that any date changes after 5 Jul 2022 for bookings ticketed before this date will not require any additional miles, but any itinerary changes will incur additional cost per the revised award levels. You can check out SIA’s official statement and the new award charts here.
Before I give my personal thoughts on the devaluation, let’s run through some of the headline changes.
Award Costs Have Increased
SIA Award Costs
Let’s start with the most obvious. The costs of award tickets have increased. For SQ-only redemptions, across all cabin classes, one-way Advantage awards have increased by an average of 2.8%, while Saver awards have increased by an average of 11.3%. Breaking that down into each cabin class and award type, this is what the average increases look like:
- Economy Saver: 10.3%
- Premium Economy Saver: 10.5%
- Business Saver: 12.2%
- First Saver: 12.0%
- Economy Advantage: 2.4%
- Business Advantage: 3.4%
- First Advantage: 2.6%
Focusing on Saver awards, the largest increases are generally for Zone 10 (Africa, Middle East & Turkey), Zone 11 (Europe), Zone 12 (USA West Coast & Canada) and Zone 13 (USA East Coast & Houston). This broadly applies to any redemptions that touch these zones, regardless of origin zone. Arguably, that these zones have increased the most should be no surprise. These are mostly long haul routes, and the increase in relatively larger increase in award rates here could stem from a desire on SQ’s part to “recover” the relatively higher unit operating costs of these flights. Zone 10, under the current award rates, could be considered real bargain for the distance and flight time especially for awards to Turkey and South Africa. The increase has brought the 2 zones a bit closer, albeit still with a significant differential.
For Advantage awards, Zone 10 is again the hardest hit with Economy Advantage and Business Advantage rates increasing by over 15%. Besides Zone 10, the only other increases are in Zones 11, 12 and 13. As with the Saver increases, this likely boils down to “cost recovery” for these expensive-to-operate long haul routes.
What about Upgrade Awards?
Personally, I’m not in favour of using miles for upgrades. Firstly, to be able to upgrade you’ll need to booked on one of the higher fare groups (either Standard or Flexi), so the base cost of your ticket is already relatively high. Of course, if your employer is paying for the base ticket then that’s not issue. Secondly, the cost in miles for an upgrade award is typically not far off from redeeming a full award. In most cases, you’d better off redeeming an award outright instead of an upgrade award, once you factor in the cash price of your base ticket plus the cost in miles for the upgrade. For these reasons, I won’t go into any analysis of the increase in upgrade award costs.
And Star Alliance awards?
I personally don’t prefer using Krisflyer miles for Star Alliance awards, as I prefer to conserve my KF miles for First and Business saver awards on SQ metal, since these are generally only available through KF (with certain exceptions). For the sake of analysis, the average increase for Star Alliance awards across all cabin classes is 12.6%. The spread across each cabin class is roughly +/-1% from that average. On a zonal level, it’s the Middle East, North Africa and Central, South America zones that see the largest increases of around 15-16%.
The Stopover ‘trick’ is gone
I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve personally never taken advantage of this as I have never been able to work out my travel plans that smoothly and predictably. Under current rules, it would be possible to build in a stopover on one-way Saver award tickets for USD100. For round-trip Saver or one-way Advantage, you are allowed 1 free stopover and any additional will incur the USD100 charge. For round-trip Advantage, you are allowed 2 free stopovers and an additional stopover would also be USD100. The maximum number of stopovers on any ticket is 3. Additional paid stopovers could only be added by calling Krisflyer Membership Services or visiting a SIA ticket office. To clarify, a stopover is different from a normal transit, and is longer than 24hrs.
In theory, a stopover could be up to the maximum ticket validity – typically 1 year. Thus, it would be possible to fly say JCL London-Singapore, stopover for 6 months, then continue onto Sydney. All this while paying the Zone 11 to Zone 9 JCL rate, which is currently (pre-5 Jul) 116,000 for Saver. That’s much lower than redeeming LHR-SIN and SIN-SYD in separate tickets – 92,000 + 62,000 = 154,000. At a cost of additional USD100, you would be saving 38,000 miles, or the equivalent of 1x JCL Saver Singapore to Cairns with change to spare! What a bargain, right? Well that’s probably why SQ are clamping down and removing this ‘loophole’.
For all redemption bookings ticketed from 1 Aug 2022, no more paid stopovers will be allowed and all stopovers will be limited to 30 days. SIA has helpfully illustrated this in a table:
| Saver Awards | Advantage Awards | |
|---|---|---|
| One-Way | No stopover | 1 stopover |
| Round Trip | 1 stopover | 2 stopovers |
| Validity of award tickets | 12 months | 12 months |
Personally I’m ambivalent about this change since I’ve never taken advantage of this ‘trick’, but I know many people were fans of this and will be extremely disappointed this is now gone.
My take on these changes
Clearly any devaluation is bad news, but all things is considered this isn’t the worse devaluation it could be. An average increase of 11% is not insignificant, but if you’re like me and took advantage of the 15% transfer bonuses SQ was running in late 2020 and 2021, you’re technically still ahead even with this devaluation. SQ were always unlikely to give away bonus miles for nothing, and it’s now payback time. Not ideal, but not hardly the end of the world.
If you’ve taken advantage of those transfer bonuses, and also built up a stash of miles along the way to (re)qualify for KF Elite Gold or PPS, then you’ve probably also been looking for ways to burn some miles on premium-cabin redemptions. If you’ve just started looking, well….good luck. I know, I’ve tried. With the travel floodgates open and big mileage balances lying around, it’s hard to find any F or J saver redemptions, particularly on the major routes (think LHR, SYD, MEL, USA etc.). As a lowly KFEG, I don’t see as much availability as PPS will, but I doubt they have it much better. A quick scan for F Saver availability these routes turned up nothing except Jakarta. Thankfully, I have burned through quite a big chunk of my KF balance since VTL first opened last year. I hate to say it, but hopefully the devaluation will bring down miles balances to a “normal” level so award inventory is easier to find in the medium to longer term.
Furthermore, with SQ bringing back Krisflyer Spontaneous Escapes in the last few months, there’s still opportunities to secure redemptions at fairly attractive rates. With the typical discount rate of 30%, that’s quite a bit of savings to stretch your miles further, if you’ve got flexibility to travel somewhat last minute and can set those travel plans in stone (remember Spontaneous Escapes are not refundable at all). Of course from July onward the discounts will apply on the new increased award rates, nonetheless it’s a positive step that SQ has resumed Spontaneous Escapes after the Covid-enforced pause.
Given the quantum of the increase in award rates and the fact that award inventory is so hard to find right now, I personally won’t be rushing to burn up my miles before 5 Jul. I would have liked to be able to lock in some redemptions for Sakura season next year (surely Japan would have fully reopened by then right??) but unfortunately there isn’t any availability that fits my schedule. My other travel plans for the rest of 2022 onwards are very fluid at the moment, so I don’t feel the inclination to save miles by rushing to get redemptions locked in. Do keep in mind that even if you decide to change an award ticket after 5 Jul, for date changes you will pay the current rates but a routing change will incur be will reissued at the new rates. Even if it’s only a date change, you may not be able to find availability on the new dates. Hence, if you’re like me and don’t have any fairly firm travel plans, I would advise holding off to avoid being locked into a destination you may not want to go eventually and end up paying redeposit fees to cancel the ticket.
Conclusion
I think this devaluation is fairly mild, and I personally don’t see a need to rush to lock in redemptions before 5 Jul unless you’ve got fairly firm travel plans. Let me know in the comments if you’ve locked in any redemptions in view of this devaluation!