One of the hardest KrisFlyer awards to book is the Star Alliance Round-the-World (RTW) award, but when the stars align just right, it can be magical.
For a flat fee starting from just 200,000 miles, KrisFlyer members can book a globe-spanning journey of up to 16 flights and 35,000 miles, leveraging the full reach of the Star Alliance network. Imagine visiting Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, London, Zurich, Cairo and Delhiโ all on the same trip!
Unfortunately, Singapore Airlines has announced that it will be eliminating this award type from 1 May 2024, though there’s still time to book one now if you don’t mind doing the (not insignificant) legwork!
KrisFlyer ending Star Alliance RTW awards
Per an update on the Singapore Airlines website, Star Alliance RTW awards will no longer be bookable from 1 May 2024.
Round The World Awards will not be available for ticketing via Singapore Airlines from 1 May 2024. Award tickets issued before 1 May 2024 will remain valid.
-Singapore Airlines
All existing RTW awards issued before 1 May 2024 will remain valid, so there’s still three weeks to assemble and book an award. Don’t underestimate the time you need to do so though. If the miles game had a capstone course, booking a RTW award would certainly be on the syllabus!
The KrisFlyer terms and conditions have also been updated to reflect this change, at Section J, Point 3.
Booking a Star Alliance RTW award
The last time Star Alliance RTW awards made the news was in July 2022, whenย Singapore Airlines hiked the prices by 11-17% as part of 2022’s KrisFlyer devaluation.ย
| ย | Before 5 Jul 22 | From 5 Jul 22 | Increase |
| Economy | 180,000 | 200,000 | +11% |
| Business | 240,000 | 280,000 | +17% |
| First | 360,000 | 405,000 | +13% |
Economy, Business and First Class RTW awards now cost 200,000, 280,000 and 405,000 miles respectively- still reasonable in my opinion, though you need to factor in some hefty fuel surcharges should carriers like Lufthansa or Turkish Airlines feature in your itinerary.ย
To give you an idea, Lufthansa slaps S$405 of fuel surcharges on aย one-way Business Class ticket from Singapore to Munich, while Turkish will charge you S$363 on a one-way Business Class ticket from Istanbul to New York JFK. It all adds up!
The bigger issue with Star Alliance awards isn’t so much the cost, but the difficulty involved in booking them. Here’s a quick recap of the rules.ย
| ๐ KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW Award Rules |
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Simply put, you need a lot of luck (and flexibility) to not only find award space, but assemble it in a way that satisfies all of the above rules.ย It’s a process that can take weeks to plan, and if award space disappears on even one of your legs, it can be back to the drawing board.
And perhaps the biggest issue of all with Star Alliance RTW awards booked via KrisFlyer is the lack of flexibility: once your trip has started, you cannot make any changes, period. Either you board your flights as originally planned, or you find another way to compete the rest of your journey.ย
Don’t forget that Singapore Airlines charges a US$250 booking fee and US$25 servicing fee for RTW awards, perhaps reflecting their increased complexity. This fee is waived for bookings made by Solitaire PPS Club and PPS Club members.ย
| ๐ RTW Award Fees | ||
| ย | Solitaire PPS & PPS Club | All others |
| Booking | N/A | US$250 |
| Changes* | US$25 | US$50 |
| Cancellation* | US$75 | US$100 |
| Changes and cancellation can only be done before the first leg of the award has been flown |
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Would I do an RTW award?
I’ve done my share of RTWs back in my consulting days, though they were all on paid tickets.ย
Those were already hard enough to plan (since RTW tickets can only book into certain fare classes), and I can’t imagine doing it for awards.
Even if you know how to search for award space through KVS, a partner website or Seats.Aero,ย you have a very long phone call ahead with the CSO (trust me, you don’t want to fill up this form and wait for them to get back), who may not even be familiar with how to book such an award. And who’s to say that award space won’t disappear in the meantime, putting you back to square one?ย
That’s why whenever people ask me about KrisFlyer RTW awards, the first thing I do is point them in the direction of the Asia Miles Multi-Carrier Award (MCA) instead. These let you achieve the same end, with much more flexibility.ย
| ย | Asia Miles MCA | KrisFlyer RTW |
| Max. Distance | 50,000 miles | 35,000 miles |
| Max. Stopovers | 5 | 7 |
| Max. Transfers | 2 | Not specified, but maximum of 16 flight segments including transfers |
| Max. open-jaws | 2 (diff. airports in same city do not count towards open jaw allowance eg. HND/NRT) | En route open jaws (“surface sectors”) count as stopovers, destination open jaw permitted (diff. airports in the same city count as stopovers eg. HND/NRT) |
| Must cross Atlantic & Pacific | No | Yes |
| Backtracking | Yes | No |
| Visit same city | Yes | No |
| Change after departure | Yes | No |
| Cost in miles (J/F) | 60-280K/ 75-380K | 280/405K |
For more details, refer to the post below.ย
Planning a round-the-world award? Forget KrisFlyer; use Asia Miles’ best-kept secret
All that having been said, RTW awards are not impossible to book. A member of the MileChat attained folk hero status byย reportingย a successful RTW booking via KrisFlyer, securing what appears to be a stonking itinerary: SIN-ICN ICN-NRT NRT-LAX JFK-FRA FRA-OSL OSL-TOS TOS-OSL OSL-FRA FRA-FCO FCO-MUC MUC-ATH ATH-CDG CDG-DEL DEL-SIN
Read about his experience here.ย
Conclusion
From 1 May 2024, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer members will no longer be able to book Star Alliance RTW awards, eliminating this complicated but potentially useful option.
While these “unicorn awards” require a good deal of patience and time to assemble, the payoff can be fantastic. Imagine seeing the world for just 280,000 miles in Business Class, or just 57,000 miles more than what it’d cost to fly from Singapore to New York and back!
Existing Star Alliance RTW awards will not be affected, and you can continue booking them right up till 30 April 2024. If this has been on your bucket list, you’d better start planning soon.
Possible to mix classes for first RTW, first and business, since some sectors donโt have first . Are partner airlines availability that appear on SQ โsaverโ level tickets? If not, how to find โsaverโ level tickets with partner airlines? Thanks ๐
I’m now on my RTW Krisflyer redemption. Six months in the planning. Didn’t call the CS but made more than one trip to Ion. Was not difficult to plan.
Any comment from SQ about the reasons why?
no, and i doubt they’d provide much detail if asked. all i can think is that these tickets involved too much CSO effort for too little utilisation; and they simply decided it wasn’t worth continuing.