On Tuesday I wrote about the announcement that Singapore Airlines would be operating the Airbus 380 on their route between San Francisco and Singapore (via Hong Kong) between December 28, 2012, and March 24, 2013. This is both good and bad news for those looking to book award tickets.
It’s good news because those that have existing bookings in first class will get upgraded to “Suites Class” (since there’s no first class on the Airbus 380). It’s bad news, though, because you can’t redeem Singapore’s KrisFlyer miles for Suites Class at the saver level, meaning during that time period it won’t be possible to redeem KrisFlyer miles for first class, which was quite a good deal at 140,250 KrisFlyer miles roundtrip.
But here’s the truly bizarre thing. In my experience whenever Singapore announces an aircraft change to an Airbus 380 they update their systems literally within minutes, to prevent people from making first class bookings under the assumption that they’ll later be switched to Suites Class.
Which brings me to this aircraft swap. As soon as I heard the news I made two first class bookings at the saver level during the period using KrisFlyer miles, in hopes of flying Suites Class on the Airbus 380. Yet four days later the flight still shows a 777-300ER.
So there’s not really a point to this post other than to share my excitement/anxiousness, and the fact that I’m checking the flight far too often in hopes of seeing a Suites Class seatmap for my itinerary.
As of now the route still has first class award availability using KrisFlyer miles. KrisFlyer is transfer partners with American Express Membership Rewards, though the catch is that transfers take approximately 24 hours. Initially I advised against making a transfer since I assumed the aircraft swap would occur within minutes (or hours at most), though four days later the swap still hasn’t occurred.
So if you have ~71,000 American Express Membership Rewards points sitting around and don’t mind gambling a bit, why not transfer some points to KrisFlyer for a one-way first class booking between San Francisco and Hong Kong that would eventually be turned into Suites?
Or I dunno, maybe Singapore is rethinking the aircraft swap, which is why they still haven’t updated the schedule…
Saver first class award availability
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