Questions and Answers

As someone who lives in NYC who has never flown United/avoids EWR if possible, what’s the best place to put miles from a paid J roundtrip on Singapore JFK-FRA? Right now I’m putting the flight to a new Krisflyer account which their calculator says I should earn ~9.6K miles. If I were to then open a Chase Sapphire or Citi Prestige* account and earn current bonuses that can transfer it seems like I’m close to a nice one way award to pretty much anywhere in first/suites per [URL]http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2016/02/01/singapore-airlines-great-points-transfer-partner-worlds-greatest-awards/[/URL] — even if have to get to west coast to get the flight? Missing something?

Or is there a better transfer? Better Star Alliance program to park miles unless I specifically am thinking of another Singapore flight?

* Have enough AA miles right now and I guess I could do both cards and earn both bonuses in same 3 month span based on normal spending

[USER=1689]@MSJ[/USER]

Welcome

Krisflyer is a good program, and then there is the fact that SQ don’t release much J/any F space to other Staralliance programs. So if you plan is to use the miles on SQ in the future Krisflyer is the way to go.

Air Canada program might be an option, but it does depends on what you are planning to use the miles for?

Thanks for the info! No trips planned. Looking at SQ’s route map I’d say LAX-NRT and SFO-ICN look like trips I’d consider later in the year.

On a theoretical SQ one-way award, it seems it’s a small bit of miles to start on east coast vs SFO/LAX. I assume that means you’re stuck doing a United transcon out of Newark to connect?

Mixing SQ and United means it will be charged at price of the StarAlliance chart, and not the award chart for SQ own flights. Plus you will not be able to get the 15% online booking discount.

I’ve been putting miles from my UA flights into SQ’s FFP because I’m also planning a SQ F/J award. Even though I don’t fly all that often (much less fly exclusively on UA or *A), this works out because so many credit card points are transferable to SQ. SQ is also attractive because you can get 100% of distance traveled for most fares – that’s certainly not the case for many partner arrangements, and even on UA you get miles according to amount spent rather than distance flown. So unless you are purchasing full fares or F/J tickets, and/or have UA status, you end up getting more SQ miles than UA miles for most economy tickets.

A few things to keep in mind, though: SQ charges fuel surcharges (unlike UA) and the miles expire after 2 years, full stop – there is no way to extend their validity if you do not redeem them for something.

For me, neither of these is a big problem because (a) the fuel surcharges, while annoying, are not as crazy high as on some carriers (like VS); (b) you can get SQ F only by using SQ miles, so since that’s the goal, I have no choice but to build up a SQ balance, and (c) I plan to redeem within the next 2 years.

[QUOTE=”No Name, post: 15070, member: 268″]Mixing SQ and United means it will be charged at price of the StarAlliance chart, and not the award chart for SQ own flights. Plus you will not be able to get the 15% online booking discount.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the clarification. So the best thing to do would be to get to the west coast on my own on a transcon I actually want to fly (ie not United) if I were to book an award out of SFO/LAX.

Aside – I realized in going through all this I had a roundtrip on OS last June. No FFP account was attached to the ticket. It was a coach ticket paid for by a 3rd party, but I ‘bid’ to upgrade the ticket both ways to J. Assume there’s no way to make a retroactive claim for whatever that would be worth, but figured I’d ask

[USER=1689]@MSJ[/USER] – there might have been a way just after the trip but most FFPs require you to put in your claim within ~30 days of the flight, so it’s too late now.