Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Award Waitlist Basics: How Does It Work?

Have travelled on SQ redemptions about 20 times, tried waitlisting about half the time for better timed flights, etc - they never cleared! I'd be interested if anyone has had any luck recently at all!

I am not interested in the awards malarkey, but the photograph of the suites ‘arm chair’, was a nice reminder of pleasant flights past and those still to come. Thank you Ben.

The real pain is that you have to have the miles in your account in order to waitlist. So if you're not a natural SQ earner, you have to move the miles from Chase/Amex, etc. there speculatively.

And a tip is to waitlist for as many flights as you think you may want, because often, for example, what you'll do is book an actual available flight with the miles you moved there. Then you've used up your miles and can no longer waitlist any more flights. It's a pain.

(not so) subtle flex

Not to mention, once transferred krisflyer miles expire in 3 years, so there's a time pressure to use up the miles in the case the gambled wait list upgrade fails to clear

Thanks for the article. As a new KF member, last year I flew mostly on SQ, miles are accumulating.
It would be nice to hear from the community how this turns out in practice.

As PPS I haven’t had a waitlist - out of probably around 50 - clear in over 2-years. I think waitlists are not that in name only.

Nope, none of my waitlists have cleared for revenue or reward flights since are the time they introduced the 2-week prior auto-cancel. Even when calling PPS hotline with flights that are departing within 24-hours with empty seats and trying to change to an earlier flight - no luck. Have a handful of colleagues in the same boat so not sure waitlists work at all any more.

I used to LOVE waitlisting awards. You’d call up SQ and ask them to clear it and often in the next few days it would. I’d waitlist like 9 awards and it was a great feeling to wake up to texts from sq with a cleared waitlist.

Sadly I don’t even bother anymore. Two weeks cancellation makes it useless. Never mind that sq used to have a ton of award availability. Seems threadbare these days.

I flew suites and biz quite a few times with them and loved it. These days I’ve had to burn a ton of points with advantage awards. Very sad.

Also the prices they charge to upgrade at the gate to biz are crazy.

Wow Justin ….. I blinked and I almost missed your jealousy. Steady on old bean if your CC is maxed out after Christmas, you will have to be patient before you can enjoy the SQ experience, yes?

Exactly, waitlists don't work any more. Out of 50, none have cleared even when I have a confirmed booking (revenue or award) and just want an earlier flight and there are still seats for sale. This is with PPS status, and friends with Solitaire have the same thing, not waitlists clearing in the last couple of years.

Super annoying when you just want an earlier flight and the seats are going empty anyway, what's the cost to them?

Ouch got me I’ll go cower under a rock now

…. thanks for the grin …. 🙂

Here is what I think happened. Singapore Airlines has recently launched an Access award level, increasing the number of award tiers to three: Saver, Advantage, and Access. This has led to almost no availability at the Saver level, with most award seats now only available at Advantage or Access.

So technically, they didn’t devalue the number of miles required, but by creating a third category and drastically reducing Saver availability, they achieved the same result. If you want an award from Australia to Europe, you’ll almost never find Saver space (141k miles), but you’ll easily find availability at the Advantage level (181.5k miles).

Qatar uses the same strategy. SNEAKY.

"(not so) subtle flex"

-IF- one were to actually believe in any of the inanity that this persona posts on any given day.

Thus making it more of an intelligence test for the reader, than observed flex by the poster. 😉

None at all! Such a crap program that it makes Skymiles seem like a downright bargain!

Honestly speaking, Krisflyer has got to be the worst loyalty program of any major global carrier. Total rubbish.