Singapore Airlines Flight Pass: Buy air tickets in bulk and save up to 20%

Singapore Airlines has launched an interesting new product called Flight Pass, which allows travellers to pre-purchase multiple discounted air tickets, for use over a fixed period of time. 

Note that this is not one of those “all you can fly” passes we’ve seen from airlines such as AirAsia, Air Canada and JetBlue, which cover multiple destinations within their network. Instead, Flight Passes are tied to a specific city, and the number of times you can fly depends on the pass you buy. 

It’s basically a way of locking in fares ahead of travel, which may be of interest to individuals/SMEs who frequently visit/send employees to a particular destination. 

Singapore Airlines Flight Pass

Flight Pass is only available for Economy Class tickets at the moment, with Singapore Airlines understandably cautious about any hint of discounting its premium cabins. All travel must originate from Singapore, and covered destinations include France, Italy, South Korea, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK. 

Overview: Singapore Airlines Flight Pass

Think of Flight Pass like “buy now, fly later”. 

At the time of purchase, you’ll be asked about six variables, each of which affects the final price of your Flight Pass:

Do note that some variables are codependent, e.g. if I choose Lite fares, I won’t be able to pick 7 or 14 days advance booking (since the limit for Lite is 21 days). 

Travel Zone

Singapore Airlines Flight Passes only cover a single destination, with the exception of one multi-destination pass covering Barcelona, Milan, Rome and Paris. 

The following routes are available:

• Singapore ⮂ Amsterdam
• Singapore ⮂ Barcelona
• Singapore ⮂ London
• Singapore ⮂ Milan
• Singapore ⮂ Paris
• Singapore ⮂ Rome
• Singapore ⮂ Seoul
• Singapore ⮂ Barcelona/ Milan/ Rome/ Paris

Singapore Airlines says it will progressively extend Flight Pass to additional destinations. 

Travel Period

The departure date of all flights booked with the Flight Pass must be within the Travel Period. 

For example, the last flight of a Flight Pass with a selected start date of 1 January 2022 and a Travel Period of 6 months should depart by 1 July 2022.

Number of Travellers

Flight Passes can be shared among a group of people, like a family or within a workplace. 

The maximum number of passengers allowed to share a Flight Pass depends on the number of flights selected. There are no restrictions on the number of flight bookings allowed per passenger; each passenger can travel alone or with one or more of the other passengers on any trip.

Each passenger must be above the age of 2 years, and at least one name must be added during Flight Pass purchase. The remaining passenger names should be provided within 24 hours of purchase. However, customers with a valid SQ corporate ID (e.g. HighFlyer accounts) can provide the remaining names any time after Flight Purchase. 

Number of Flights

Only round-trip bookings are permitted, and therefore each booking consumes two flight credits.

Advance Booking

This refers to how many days prior to departure flights must be booked.

Fare Type

This is perhaps the most important variable of all, because it affects how many seats are available to your Flight Pass.

As a reminder, Singapore Airlines has three buckets of Economy Class fares: Lite, Standard and Flexi (technically there’s a fourth called Value, but we’ll ignore that for now). Lite fares are the cheapest, but have the least availability. Flexi fares are the most expensive, but have the most availability- right up to the last seat on the plane. 

To check whether a given date has booking class availability, you can do a dummy search on the SIA website. For example, here’s the options available for a 9 January 2022 flight to Seoul.

Be careful about the labels shown! For example, you may think that there’s no possibility of using your Economy Lite Flight Pass because the only options available are Value, Standard and Flexi.

However, when you click on Economy Value, you see that the booking class is “Q”. This is covered by the Lite pass, so you should pay more attention to the fare codes (Q/N/M/H/W etc. etc.) rather than the labels (Lite/Standard/Flexi).

Flight Passes can of course be used to book VTL flights; all that matters is whether there’s availability in the given booking class.

Evaluating Trade-offs

The system will prompt you about how various trade-offs affect the final price of your Flight Pass. In the example below, the customer can save S$117 by opting for a 60 days advance booking window instead of the current 30 days.

You save more (on a per flight basis) if you:

• Take a longer advance booking period
• Have fewer passengers on your Flight Pass
• Increase the number of flights 
• Reduce your travel period
• Opt for Lite fares

Is Flight Pass really cheaper?

The Flight Pass homepage provides the following sample quotes for fares in the Lite category. 

The important thing to remember is that you’ll need to multiply the per flight cost by 2X, because each redemption of the Flight Pass involves a return trip. 

For comparison, the cheapest round-trip Economy fare I can find from Singapore to London costs S$1,063, so by purchasing an 8-ticket pack to London with 6 months’ validity and 90 days advance booking, you’d save about 10%. 

I’m not sure that’s the kind of savings that would warrant locking in four return trips to London, unless you already knew you were going to make them anyway. 

Similarly, the cheapest round-trip Economy fare I can find from Singapore to Barcelona costs S$959, so by purchasing a 16-ticket pack to Barcelona with 6 months’ validity and 120 days advance booking, you’d save about 14%.

So there’s definitely savings to be had, but as with all prepaid systems, the risk is that you might not be able to use all of your credits. Because of how the math works, missing even a single trip could cost you more than any savings you originally envisioned!

Who is Flight Pass best for?

Flight Pass would probably be the most useful to someone who frequently visits a given destination several times a year (e.g. expats paying a visit back home), or an SME which regularly sends employees to the same location. 

In such cases, the savings are basically free money, since they’d have incurred the expenses anyway. 

Of course, they’ll need to keep in mind the loss of flexibility (e.g. if you absolutely must fly on a certain day and there’s no Lite availability, you’ll still have to buy a separate Standard/Flexi ticket) and the possibility of wastage. 

Conclusion

Singapore Airlines Flight Pass is a way for the airline to secure upfront cash for flights taken down the road, with the house winning should any wastage occur. 

Since it limits you to a particular destination, it won’t be useful to the vast majority of travellers. However, for expatriates or companies which frequent a particular destination, there’s the opportunity to lock in some upfront savings at the expense of cashflow. 

What do you make of the Singapore Airlines Flight Pass?