Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards To Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

No caviar on IAH-DME in first?

So it's 57,375 miles + $226.90 for IAH-DME. Do you know if it's possible to tag on YVR-IAH, to make it YVR-IAH-DME, UA J / SQ F? How much would it cost?

Thanks Lucky for this post!!! Looking forward to tomorrow's post. I'm hoping to redeem a one way from HNL/OGG/LIH back to NYC and don't have any SQ miles, but this solved my problem! Woohoo!!!

Question is what would you do if you were me - I am looking for 2 seats at the end of Sept., but I don't see any saver seats available for business. I see some economy and it's not too bad since there is a layover and each flight is 5 hours and change each. I am not sure if I should wait and hope that they'll release some more business seats or just do the economy. What do you think? I don't have a date set in stone to come back, it can be any time from Sept 25 - Sept 30 and I can fly back from any of the islands. Thanks Lucky!

I've noticed it's now harder to find business class seats on the JFK-FRA-SIN route ever since SQ ended the non-stop SIN-EWR flight last year. :/

Lucky, can do a post about KrisFlyer sweet spots for star alliance redeptions I am guessing there are some sweetspots that would make transferring the miles to krisflyer for partner redemptions more valuable than UA with their devaluation, especially for Star Alliance First class & Biz Class

i'd like to remind everyone that their biz class amenity kit is a joke... and some routes don't even get one at all. sad.

If you don't live near one of the gateway cities, do you need to buy/use other miles for your positioning flight? It seems that actually adds quite a bit of real cost to the redemption.

Ben,

Have you ever seen 3 First class suites available on the A380 on any of the routes ????

Adam

The 15% discount on online bookings is great. But, a quick question: do you need the full amount of miles in your account before booking, at which point you will receive the discount? Or do I only need the discounted amount?

Thanks!

how long does it take to transfer miles from Chase ultimate Rewards to Singapore?

Nice! Thanks for breaking the news.

Does SQ allow a Tokyo stopover on a lax-sin award?

@ Beachfan -- They allow one stopover on a roundtrip, though not on a one-way.

@ gsw90405 -- Based on what I'm being told, roughly a day.

@ MarcusBWI -- You only need the discounted amount.

@ Adam -- Never three, only two.

@ turgutebey -- The Singapore KrisFlyer chart is exclusively for travel on Singapore. Tomorrow I'll cover the Star Alliance award chart, which would allow you to mix Star Alliance partners and Singapore Airlines.

@ john -- Coming tomorrow!

@ Ang -- If you're flexible I would probably hold off and wait for the space you want to open up, assuming flying business class is something you value. Otherwise would lock in the economy options. Good luck!

@ echino -- If you add on a segment on a Star Alliance carrier you'd be charged per the Star Alliance award chart. One-way from the US to Europe costs 80K miles in first class per the Star Alliance award chart, with no option of a 15% online booking discount.

I am actually interested in using Krisflyer miles for U.S. Star Alliance bookings on UA. If UA has the award space on their website, does that mean that SQ can book it?

@ Carl -- If MileagePlus shows saver award space then Singapore KrisFlyer should have access to it as well.

Lucky,

Quick question - Can I transfer UR points from 2 different accounts into one KrisFlyer account? Would be useful if booking 2 tickets. Else would have to check for availability and make sure it remains unchanged while tickets 2 different accounts are booked. This would be so much better if they allowed even 24-hour holds.
Thanks!

@ Hitesh -- The rules state that Ultimate Rewards points can only be transferred to a mileage account in the name of the account holder or their spouse.

Oh awesome! This is to my wife's KrisFlyer account!

Stupid question but...how does Chase know if the person is my spouse or not? Just based on postal address?

@Adam: i see where you're going there- positioning for the rarest of the rare; a commercial airline mile high threesome. good luck!

@abby .. LOL.. If only my life was that good 🙂

I had a schedule change this week that caused a misconnect on a Krisflyer award ticket on UA. They had to redeposit my ticket and start from scratch to get me the new flights I wanted. They allowed a 72 hour hold on the new ticket while we waited for miles to be refunded on first ticket so I wouldn't lose the space. Clearly this means they are physically able to hold award tickets. Ben...have you ever tested their "no hold" policy with the hang up and call again rule??

P.S. Another selling point of KrisFlyer over MileagePlus is that there agents are consistently 10 times more competent than their United counterparts.

Great excuse to write about Singapore? You mean Singapore is a great excuse to pimp Ink products again and again and again and again.

Hey, did you know that super duper 60K Ink offer is going away June 1? Get it now!!! Click HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!

C'mon. Enough pimping. Can't you at least shove the links to the sidebars? Our eyes are bleeding from seeing so many Ink links.

I'm with Abby normal.

Good overview of KF, Lucky! Thx. in your experience how long does it take for the waitlist to clear/reject. Looking for a redemption in October and only waitlist is possible at the moment for the date I need.

@ GBM.flights -- It could be months out or it could be a week out. No way to know, unfortunately.

@Paul (at 1:04 am), I'd be more than happy to click on any of Lucky's referral links simply because he is so helpful and generous with his advice. I hope this reason is good enough for the lowlife piece of shit that you are! If not, go fcuk yourself, I might just give a rat's ass someday.

Does SQ allow mixing cabins, or will it cause problems? for instance if I wanted to fly DPS-SIN-FRA-JFK with the DPS-SIN leg in C and the rest in F, how would it price out?

Am I reading SQ's Star Alliance award chart right? They seem to charge less for some partner flights than for their own (e.g. 137.5k from North America to Australia on SQ metal; 127.5k on *A.) Admittedly, there's the 15% online booking discount, but this would be the first time I've seen an airline effectively offer a discount for not using their own product. Right?

@ Josh -- That's correct, and actually not that surprising. The only way they can get you there on Singapore metal is through Singapore, while if you redeemed on Star Alliance partners you'd have to fly "direct" (they wouldn't let you route via Asia as far as I know).

What are the stopover rules? Can I book the A380 LAX-NRT-SIN with a long layover in Tokyo for the same 91,000 in Suites?

@ Doug -- You're allowed a stopover on a roundtrip, though not on a one-way.

Lucky, is it possible to add the stopover online? Or you have to call? Thanks.

@ jo -- It is possible online.

How about layovers? For example, if I go SFO to HKG to SIN, can I have a layover at HKG for up to the 24 hours?

@ Elena -- Yep, up to 24 hours is fine. Sometimes not bookable online, so you may have to call, but with some persistence should be able to convince an agent to still give you 15% discount.

I'm trying to get to Bangkok in October, first week ish and come back the 20ish 5 day flexibility on either end. I've check SF, LAX and JFK (I'm a New Yorker so JFK would be best) and there is no saver rates out of JFK, out of LAX the cost in first is 210, 000, SFO is 215,000 and I'd have to buy a ticket to LA or SF. Curious am I looking too early? I'd love to love from home if I could I'm just trying to figure out when to move my miles from Amex and Chase... should I wait to see if anything comes up out of JFK or just transfer the miles and keep checking and nab what I can when I can?

can you redeem UA miles for economy SQ flights to avoid YQ?
thanks

@ mr. cool -- Sure, if you want to fly economy and there's partner award space.

@ Lucky - I think on the GC map you have SFO and LAX routes flipped. Also, did you mean to say that opening up award space is a manual process? If it were automatic, it'd be easy to predict.

@ Ivan Y -- Hah that's weird because I entered it correctly and when I make the map again the same thing happens. It's not manual in the sense that there seems to be no "manual" interventions to open up space when a cabin is wide open. Instead the computer applies some odd arbitrary judgment.

Ohh... So it's automatic but we just don't have a good grasp on the algorithm behind it.

P. S. You finally broke GC Mapper!

Thanks Lucky for your response!

Can one backtrack when it is also a valid SQ revenue routing? (i.e. LAX-NRT-SIN-TPE all on SQ). Looking at the Krisflyer chart, Zone 13 to Zone 5 is Westcoast to Taipei 70,125 miles?

@ Mike -- They'll typically do cumulative pricing there, so charge you for US to Singapore and then Singapore to Taipei separately.

@ Mike - Lucky is correct but I wanted to elaborate a bit (did some experimentation with SQ KF site):

(1) SQ doesn't fly F on SIN-TPE so you'd run into problems when trying to book a mixed cabin routing (it switches everything to J).

(2) While SQ chart shows 75K for J & 82.5K for F between Zones 4 (South Chine/Hong Kong/Taiwan) and 13 (West Coast), it has a little cross symbol next to it which is note that indicates the rate is only valid for nonstop routes between two destinations.

(3) In practical terms, #2 means that if you fly SFO-HKG nonstop on SQ1, it's 70,125 for F (after 15% off) but if you chose another option that KF site presents (SFO-ICN-SIN and then SIN-HKG), the price after discount jumps to 123,250.

(4) Same is true if doing J on the routing you'd like -- it may show 75000 in column heading but once you go to price it, it comes back as 91,375.

Since you'd be looking at 114,750 if you booked it online as two one-ways (F & J), I guess it wouldn't hurt calling KF and trying to convince them to charge you 87,500 for LAX-NRT-SIN in F and SIN-TPE in J but I've never tried doing something like that.

@ Lucky - in your experience, do SQ KF agents have ability to manually price a ticket to make the above happen or do they just follow whatever their system spits out?

@ Ivan Y -- Yeah, have never been able to get them to do that, since they explicitly mention the nonstop travel requirement on their chart.

@lucky
whats the best place to search SQ economy space please?
i still havent figured out ANA's site.
thanks

@ Mr. Cool -- If you want award space as it's available to KrisFlyer members, your best bet is Singapore's website directly.

FYI, they will hold award space if you are canceling an existing award ticket and want to use the miles for the new ticket. Presumably, they do this because miles can take quite a while to be redeposited. Somewhat recently, an agent also held an award seat because I was having an issue with miles being transferred into Krisflyer (from Chase UR). The hold was to expire in FIVE MONTHS, which I thought was amazingly generous.

Also, two Suites Saver seats are available on Jan 21, SIN-JFK.

Hi Lucky,

I understand the 15% discount does not apply to Star Alliance redemption specifically. However, if one were to call and book JFK-FRA on SQ and FRA-TXL on a partner award, would I be entitled for the 15% discount?

@ Andre -- Nope, since that would become a partner redemption.

I know that on SQ I can designate up to 5 people for whom I can redeem my KF miles for award bookings. So my question is: If I make a booking for 1 of my designees and then the award booking has to be cancelled for whatever reason, will the miles used return to my account for my use however I see fit, or will they be tied in some way to that one designated individual, and only they can then use them?

Also, as far as "Waitlist" status goes, do these at least *sometimes* clear, regardless of how soon after booking or conversely how close to departure date? What would happen if it didn't clear, would the points just deposit back unused? I haven't come across any anecdotal data points for WL clears. Thanks for any insight.

@ Scott -- They'll be returned to your account and not tied to anyone. The waitlists do apparently sometimes clear. The points are never pulled when you waitlist, so there's nothing to go back. When you waitlist you don't even have to book the award, even if it clears.

Ben, if I I actually need the flight can I book an SQ flight and a waitlist flight, and swap it if the higher class becomes available?

The prompt said something about being allowed to select another flight as well. Also, I'd only want to transfer in what I'm booking -- is there an opportunity to transfer more in if my waitlist clears?

@ ed -- Yep, you can waitlist for a higher class of service without issue. You should be able to transfer points in after.

So, on January 28th, I'll be flying SQ11 F LAX-NRT-SIN. Pretty excited! I previously had SQ25 F JFK-FRA booked for November 2nd (on my way to the Athens Marathon), but once the addl. xfer partnerships debuted, I figured only 34K more newly minted KF miles would get me an extra 12 hours of F joy and make for the only really comfortable way for me to ever experience S.E. Asia so I pounced. Thanks, Lucky, for all the guidance on this.

Couple questions for Lucky, or anybody else who's flown this route: Since SQ11 arrives in Changi at 03:25 local time, which is about 12 hours off from most hotel check-in's, what does one typically do upon arrival? Does SQ offer any kind of limo/towncar transfer from the aiport for F, complimentary or for some reasonable fee? Also, how do you go about using the "Book the Chef" option (I'd hate to get stuck with whatever was available, since there are so many reports of them only stocking 1 or 2 of each on their own)? Finally, back to the start of the itinerary, does anyone know which lounge at LAX F has access to? Thanks again so much for any insights. I'm SO looking forward to this, as it will be my first Intl. F experience, and I hear there are none better!

@ Scott -- No car service. As far as checking into hotels goes, I've done it both ways. I've booked a transit hotel in Changi, I've just hung out till about 7AM and then tried to check-in, or I've just booked the hotel the night before. All depends on how important it is to me on that particular trip.

For Book The Cook you just choose what you want in advance. If you change your mind they'll still serve you something from the menu if they have leftovers.

At LAX you'll have access to the Star Alliance first class lounge, which is the best at the airport, in my opinion.

Enjoy your trip, sounds like a fun one!

H Lucky. I am a United 1K flyer with Chase Bold Ink & Starwood AMEX corporate cards. If I sign up for a Krisflyer account, can I:

1) Consolidate all my points from my 2 corporate accounts to my KF account? I'm assuming that I can't move my UA miles to a KF account.
2) Book 2 first class award tickets under my KF account? I want to travel with a companion and use all of my points for 2 passengers.

Thanks! Craig

@ Craig S -- Yep, you sure can!

Just transferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points to my Singapore Airlines account. According to them it takes 6-8 weeks before the miles can show into the account. Anyone has similar experience? Help! I am trying to book a ticket to HK and I am running out of time...

Capri

@ Capri -- That's definitely not the case. It should take about 24 hours.

Can I book FRA-DFW as Singapore, or is this only as a partner award and not bookable online? Can I look up prices/rates without a Singapore KrisFlyer account?

@ Joe -- If you want to include any travel not on Singapore then you'd have to book a partner award, which has to be done over the phone, so isn't eligible for the online discount. There's also a different award chart for that. More on that here:
https://onemileatatime.com/redeeming-singapore-krisflyer-miles-star-alliance-awards/

@ Joe @lucky -- Likewise I transferred points just yesterday, and Chase advises that turnaround time to be 48 hours but Krisflyer is stating 6-8 weeks (just got off the phone w/ them). I find this absurd and have requested a rush on the transfer. Fingers crossed that it truly is 48 hours -- we all know how dynamic point redemption seats can be.

Have you tried transferring over points recently?

@ Jun -- It typically happens within 12-24 hours. You have nothing to worry about.

Thanks for your reply. Hopefully so!

Lucky, What would you do in below scenario? Seeking aspirational (wedding anniversary) on back of EY454 F, a first-world problem your fascinating blog helped me create.

Need to get 2 pax one-way SYD-ATL F or O in June on a specific non-flexible Wednesday. Options:

1) Transfer UR-->KE: Book KE SYD-ICN-ATL A380 (High-season space is available now)
2) Speculatively transfer UR-->SQ: Waitlist SQ SYD....JFK or SYD....LAX/SFO (standard award avail now)
3) Speculatively transfer MR-->SQ: Waitlist SQ SYD....JFK or SYD....LAX/SFO (standard award avail now)
4) Monitor SQ Saver space and UR/MR transfer to SQ last minute (wait 24 hours for xfer to post)
5) Monitor last-minute CX..SYD-HKG-LAX/JFK/ORD using AA miles
6) JAL last minute trick: TYO-LAX space always opens up (use AA miles). Crappy product SYD-TYO
7) ANA/TG/OZ last minute space sometimes (not reliably) opens up (transfer MR-->Aeroplan)
8) Transfer UR--> UA J (God forbid) (SYD-US) opens up 20% of time last minute

-YQ avoidance not really a factor
-Speculative UR/MR transfers wipe out many other options (only 250K miles balances in UR/MR respectively)
-Last minute space opens up 24-36 hours out, yet 24-36 hours is typical UR/MR xfer post period
-Is KE380 so inferior to SQ F A380 or CX F that it is worth the risk of opting out? This seems like the "safest" (yet least aspirational)

@ fauxblogger -- I'd go with the Korean Air option. Since it seems like there's no date flexibility, it seems silly to gamble when you can get a "sure thing" which is actually quite good. Korean Air first class is still excellent, and Australia isn't an easy place from which to redeem miles.

Lucky

Thank you for prompt response on an older posting!

Wife is a columnist for Atlanta Journal Constitution and Dayton Daily News.. She wrote about the secret return itinerary this past Sunday https://darynkagan.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/is-husbands-surprise-a-good-thing/

@fauxblogger - thanks for that link. hilarious and oh, so true...

@ fauxblogger -- Hahahaha, that's AWESOME!

I booked 2 suite seats that make into a double bed on the Singapore to Paris flight with my husband. Because we live in Hawaii, finding A380 flights isn't easy for us. We are thinking of making our booking around the world, leaving Europe & heading west back to Hawaii. Do you have any ideas about what carriers to use from Kona to Singapore & then from Europe back to Hawaii? I've considered booking a Frankfurt- Jfk leg on Singapore to have a day flight to enjoy it. How would you get from Paris to Frankfurt? any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Aloha & Mahalo