Reminder: “Never before redemption deals” for KrisFlyer coming this Friday

Back in January 2019, I woke up in a cold winter morning to discover that Singapore Airlines would be devaluing its KrisFlyer program. However, one bright spark was that Spontaneous Escapes would be a permanent feature starting from 15 February 2019, just a few days from now.

This month’s Spontaneous Escapes promises “never-before redemption deals”

Spontaneous Escapes has been around for a while but apparently, it wasn’t an “official” promotion. Singapore Airlines will be officially launching Spontaneous Escapes on 15 February 2019 and with it, “never-before redemption deals”. Hopefully, it’ll be as grand as they’re hyping it up to be.

Spontaneous Escapes will be made a permanent feature, which means we will see discounted awards being released every month. This is welcome news as Spontaneous Escapes were previously not available for travel during February 2018, April 2018, and February 2019.

What is Spontaneous Escapes?

In late 2017, Singapore Airlines started offering 30% off award ticket redemptions for last minute travel. The program was called “Spontaneous Escapes”, and rightly so, as you needed to be able to travel in the following month (or two months after, as we’ve seen with US non-stop redemptions).

Presumably, Singapore Airlines started doing this as filling up seats at a discounted redemption prices was better than having planes flying out empty. If you’re unfamiliar with Spontaneous Escapes, you can check out our coverage of all the Spontaneous Escapes promotions here, or read the most recent one in December 2018 below.

KrisFlyer Spontaneous Escapes for January 2019 announced

To some, Spontaneous Escapes might not be particularly useful as you will never know which destinations will be offered in a particular month, plus you need to be able to take leave at short notice. In addition, you have to be very sure about your travel dates when redeeming a Spontaneous Escapes promotion as all tickets booked cannot be changed or refunded (or, you know, get travel insurance that covers award tickets)

Before anyone asks, no you can’t book a stopover on a Spontaneous Escapes award as these are only valid on a one sector basis, and can only be booked online.

Which cities will be on offer?

It’s always difficult to predict which cities will be offered from month to month, as flight loads are affected by seasonality and a whole host of other factors. However, if you believe that seasonality has the strongest effect, then maybe you could draw reference to February 2018’s Spontaneous Escapes list in trying to extrapolate what we’ll see this time round. The logic goes that if City X encounters low loads in March, then it’ll see low loads whether it’s March 2018 or March 2019.

Of course, anything beyond that is pure speculation- we’ll have to see this Friday!

How do I prepare for this?

Simple. Start transferring your credit card points into your KrisFlyer account now if you’re planing to take advantage of these deals for travel in the following month.

Most points transfer from the major banks in Singapore usually take ~3 working days from my experience and information sourced from our Telegram Group. That said, I wouldn’t recommend initiating a transfer of BOC points to KrisFlyer miles and expecting them to turn up by Friday…

If the deals are as good as Singapore Airlines is hyping them up to be, then we should see award seats getting snapped up fairly fast this Friday, so it pays to have some ammo handy.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ll definitely be all over the upcoming Spontaneous Escapes promotion on Friday (if I finish my tutorials on time that is) and am looking forward to checking out what “never before redemption deals” they will be offering.

I’m sure everyone is still pretty bummed out over the recent devaluation and I am hoping that the upcoming Spontaneous Escapes promotion will put a little smile back on all our faces.

Will you be having a Spontaneous Escape in March?