Singapore Airlines is offering 30% off Economy Saver awards for bookings made between now and 14 Feb for travel between 15 Feb and 26 May. ย The destinations covered are fairly extensive- as close as Bangkok and Koh Samui, as far as London and San Francisco.
Note that the ticket has to be issued during this period, meaning that if you’re waitlisted now and the waitlist clears after 14 Feb, you will have to pay regular price. ย Because SQ doesn’t clear their waitlist that far out, if you’re looking at anything beyond say, March, you may have to waitlist and start sending chasers immediately. I’m waitlisted one way from HND to SIN in April in economy so I’ll probably start bugging them every day now.
Does this make economy redemptions a “goodย deal?” I wouldn’t say “good”, but definitely better, especially if you’re redeeming a one-wayย ticket (ie business/first there, economy back), because one-way tickets tend to be only available in the Flexi or Flexi Saver bucket.
Remember that SQ normally gives 15% for award redemptions made online, so this is really a further 15% discount on top of that. Note also that it does not apply to all routes, but the listing is pretty extensive.
If you read the T&C it says that any changes are not allowed for tickets booked under this promotion. I’m not sure how to read this- I would assume that if you cancel your plans you still get a refund of your miles, but I don’t think you can change dates once confirmed without cancelling the entire ticket and booking again (And paying regular award prices, if you do so after 14 Feb)
See full T&C and routes here
Why are they offering this promotion? I do not know. And that scares me, somehow. Perhaps I’ve been abused too much from a loyalty point of view, but I’ve still got that looming fear of a pending SQ devaluation hanging over my head. If SQ adds premium economy for redemption, what’s to stop them from revamping the rest of the award chart while they’re at it? On the other hand, SQ is notorious for not opening new cabin products for redemption (I remember when the new business and first class seats launched in 2006 they wouldn’t let any awards be redeemed at the saver level, in an unprecedented act of arrogance), and PY might not be an exception.
Another musing for another time.
A devaluation is a matter of time, and sooner rather than later at that..:(
oh damn! in my high latency, I just saw this email and was contemplating writing out something for you, maybe a short comparison of this promotion and then simple calculations to analyse if the deal was good or not. ah well! got beat to it. lol!
haha fastest fingers first man. but i do look forward to anything else you have to write about! it’s always hard to push out a new article every 2 days or so
so anyway. I was just looking through this promo. this may or may not qualify for its own post but maybe I’ll write more next time. lol! I tried searching for 2 adult tickets from SG to LAX.. with dates all the same, paying in cash would require $3758, or $1879 per person. if I redeemed with miles, it’d cost me 98,000 miles + $1444.80, or 49,000 miles + $722.40 per person. (of note, this miles cost is as advertised, 24,500 per person per one way trip) this works out to be 2.36cents per 1mile value.. while definitely not the… Read more »
it’s not as bad as before, but 2.3 cents is still well shy of the 4-5 for J class. I think if you have a small balance of miles and dont see yourself earning any for the near future, with an upcoming trip I’d definitely consider the promotion.