Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer has added a new restriction on doing award searches, for those who don’t have any miles in their account. While I understand where they’re coming from, this is no doubt a minor annoyance for those looking to redeem.
KrisFlyer now requires 1,000 miles to search award space
The MileLion reports on how Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program has added a new restriction on searching award flights. Specifically, when you go to Singapore Airlines’ website, you can now only search award space if you have at least 1,000 miles in your account.
I only have 836 miles in my account, and when I do a search, I get the following message:
Unable to proceed because your current miles balance is insufficient for flight redemption searches. To view available flights and the miles required, browse flight options.
So if you don’t have enough miles, you’re directed to the carrier’s “Flight Recommender” tool, which is a creative concept, but obviously not as useful as just directly searching award availability.
I assume this is to stop mileage scrapers, but it’s not ideal
Admittedly this new restriction on award flights isn’t some massive hurdle that can’t be overcome. You can always just transfer 1,000 points from a transferable points currency (just keep in mind miles expire 36 months after they’re issued, regardless of activity). It’s not nearly as bad as the new restrictions we’re seeing at Qatar Airways Privilege Club, for example.
However, it kind of creates a “chicken or egg” situation when it comes to redemptions. It’s hard to be interested in a program if you don’t know what award availability and fees are like. Admittedly most airlines aren’t too worried if they lose some potential award passengers.
So, what’s the actual motivation for this change? I imagine this is intended to prevent the scraping of award availability by some services that use a bunch of burner accounts to track award availability. That can put a burden on airline servers, and it’s something they try to prevent. Given the scale of accounts that some of these services use, I’m not surprised to see this change.
Honestly, this doesn’t seem like a totally unreasonable compromise, compared to what some other airlines are starting to institute.
Bottom line
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer now limits award searches to members with at least 1,000 miles in their KrisFlyer account. That’s not some massive hurdle that can’t be overcome, as you can also just move 1,000 points from a transferable currency. Presumably this is intended to block award scraping services that use a bunch of burner accounts.
What do you make of this new KrisFlyer restriction?
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