Last call: What to do before the KrisFlyer devaluation hits

Two months ago, Singapore Airlines announced a KrisFlyer award chart devaluation that comes into effect on 1 November 2025.

While it’s not a full-throated devaluation — some Economy Saver awards will actually be decreasing in cost — there are still increases across the board for most Singapore Airlines and Star Alliance awards and upgrades, particularly to premium cabins. 

Fortunately, you can still lock in awards at the current rate and avoid the price hike, until 31 October 2025, 11.59 p.m SGT. Members can book travel for up to 355 days in advance, and while it doesn’t always make sense to book speculative awards, in some cases it might be warranted.

So with just one week left till the devaluation comes into effect, here’s a recap of what’s happening, and what you should be doing now.

How are award prices changing?

First, let’s do a quick summary of how award prices will change from 1 November 2025. 

In general, we can expect to see increases of 5% for Saver awards, and 10-15% for Advantage awards (ignoring Zone 10, which is something of an anomaly). As mentioned, there will even be a decrease in the cost of short and medium-haul Economy Saver awards of 5%. 

Where Star Alliance awards are concerned, the increases range from 5-12%.

If you prefer to go zone by zone and cabin by cabin, I’ve compiled the old and new costs for each type of award in the expandable sections below.

Upgrade awards will be increasing by roughly the same rates, though these were never good value in the first place (upgrades cost 70-80% the price of a full redemption, and only the more expensive tickets can be upgraded), and that hasn’t changed.

There are no changes to Scoot’s recently-launched fixed price award chart, and on the whole I’d say this devaluation is not nothing, but it’s not quite Armageddon either.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the upcoming dynamically-priced Access awards will have a discernible impact on award space, and whether SIA will quietly tweak the number of seats available for its lowest-priced Saver bucket (because doing so would effectively be another kind of stealth devaluation).

Time will tell.

Travel can be booked up to 355 days in advance

Award tickets can be booked up to 355 days in advance, and new Singapore Airlines inventory is loaded every day at:

• 8 a.m SGT (All destinations except USA)
• 1 p.m SGT (EWR/JFK)
• 4 p.m SGT (LAX/SEA/SFO)

Since last day to book tickets at the current prices is 31 October 2025, you can select a travel date as late as Wednesday, 21 October 2026.

Waitlists must clear by 31 October 2025

If you’re currently on a waitlist, do note that it must clear by 31 October 2025 to enjoy the current pricing.

Any waitlists that clear from 1 November 2025 onwards will be ticketed at the revised prices, even if you joined the waitlist prior to the devaluation. 

Will your waitlist clear? Your guess is as good as mine. I can tell you right now that calling up KrisFlyer or paying a visit to the ION Orchard service centre isn’t going to do much good, unless perhaps you’re a Solitaire PPS bigwig.

What you can do, however, is check the load for your flight by trying to make a dummy commercial booking on the Singapore Airlines website or Google Flights. Select the dates and destination you’re waitlisted on, then keep increasing the number of passengers until you hit  the maximum, or results no longer show. That will give you an indication of how many seats are left.

It’s a very rudimentary measure, but at the very least it will tell you if your waitlist is unlikely to clear (for example, if there are just a couple of seats remaining in Business Class, SIA is unlikely to open up further redemptions).

That said, just because there are plenty of seats left for sale is no guarantee your waitlist will clear either, as SIA has been known to let seats go out empty rather than release them for awards.

Date and flight number changes do not require a top-up

If your award was ticketed on or before 31 October 2025, then you can subsequently change the date of travel or flight number (on the same route) without paying a top-up of miles.

 Do note that a change fee may apply, depending on the award type:

• Saver: US$25
• Advantage: Free

This assumes that the revised date has available award space in the same category. 

Suppose you’ve booked a Saver award at the old rates, and want to make changes to the travel date after 1 November 2025. If the revised date only has Advantage awards, you must top-up the difference between the old Saver rate and the new Advantage rate.

Of course, there could be the reverse scenario where you booked an Advantage award at the old rates, make a change after 1 November 2025, and find that the revised date has Saver awards.

The new Saver price should still be lower than the old Advantage price, so in this case you should cancel your award ticket and rebook to save (do make sure your award booking does not contain any expired miles before cancelling though).

One important caveat here: you cannot change your travel date indefinitely. 

Award tickets are valid for 365 days from the date of issuance. Therefore, if I were to book an award on 31 October 2025, the last day before the devaluation, the ticket would be valid until 31 October 2026.

However, as of 31 October 2025, I wouldn’t be able to book 22-31 October 2026 yet, because it’s beyond the 355 day booking window. Instead, I’d have to wait until the seats open up, and it wouldn’t be until 10 November 2025 that I can move the booking to 31 October 2026 (+355 days).

But I cannot move the award ticket beyond 31 October 2026, because that’s the limit of the ticket’s validity. Doing so would involve a ticket reissuance, which would require a top-up of miles based on the revised award chart.

Therefore the absolute latest date that someone can travel on a pre-devaluation priced ticket is 31 October 2026.

If you’re still confused, I’ve explained more in the article below.

KrisFlyer devaluation: How far into the future can you move an award booking?

Other changes will require a top-up

If you make the following changes to your award ticket after 31 October 2025, you will be required to top-up the miles, based on the new award chart.

• Route (e.g. SIN-SYD to SIN-MEL)
• Cabin (e.g. Economy to Business)
• Award type (e.g. Saver to Advantage)

One interesting little factoid is that SIA considers two or more airports with the same IATA city code to be the same origin or destination (e.g TYO is used for Tokyo, which covers both Haneda and Narita). 

Therefore, if you’ve booked a ticket to any of the following destinations, you can switch to the other airport without requiring a top-up of miles. 

• Beijing (PEK/PKX)
• London (LGW/LHR)
• New York (JFK/EWR)
• Tokyo (HND/NRT)

What should you book now?

First and Business Advantage awards

In general, I don’t believe there should be any big rush to book First or Business Saver awards, because the price increases here are very modest at 5%. If you’re certain about your travel dates and the space is there, by all means, but otherwise you shouldn’t let FOMO get the better of you.

However, Advantage awards, especially long-haul ones to Europe and the USA, might be worth a look. These have the highest absolute increases of as much as 36,500 miles. 

No one likes paying Advantage prices, but they may be the only realistic hope you have for booking award seats on certain routes or travel dates, especially if you don’t have Solitaire PPS or PPS Club status. 

On the plus side, Advantage awards allow for free date changes, and have a lower refund fee of US$50. 

Zone 10 awards to Africa, Middle East and Turkey

You may have noticed that during this devaluation, Zone 10 — comprising of Africa, the Middle East and Turkey — was singled out for special treatment.

While Saver awards for other zones increased by a maximum of 5%, Zone 10 saw an increase of up to 20%. 

And if you look at the actual figures, it’s easy to understand why. A 13-hour Business Class flight between Singapore and Cape Town currently costs 56,500 miles. That is sensational value (prior to July 2022, it only cost 49,000 miles!), and perhaps too good to last.

If you must book something, then Zone 10 would be the region I’d look at.

Zone 2/3 “free flights”

This might have flown under the radar for most MileLion readers, since the community is largely based in Singapore. But if you live in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, or elsewhere in Southeast Asia, you should know that the so-called “Zone 1-3 parity” will soon be eliminated.

Currently, it costs exactly the same number of miles to fly from Zone 1/2/3 to Zones 4-13. For example, CGK-SIN-LHR costs the same as SIN-LHR, which means the CGK-SIN flight is “free”. In fact, it’s even cheaper in terms of taxes and surcharges, because Singapore charges a lower rate to transit passengers than departing ones!

From 1 November 2025, that parity will be removed, and Zone 2/3 residents will have to pay extra miles to cover the cost of their flight to Singapore. 

Compared to Zone 1 Singaporeans, Zone 2/3 residents will soon be paying an extra:

• 500 to 2,500 miles, for Economy Class
• 1,000 to 5,500 miles, for Business Class
• 1,000 to 7,500 miles, for First Class

The tables below have the precise figures.

If you live in Zone 2 and 3, you might consider booking an award now to lock in your “free flight”.

Star Alliance awards with the “free ride” perk

One unfortunate effect of the devaluation is that it will eliminate the so-called “free ride” perk, which allows you to add a Star Alliance partner flight to a Singapore Airlines redemption at no extra cost (except for additional taxes and surcharges).

This perk arises because the mileage required for a Star Alliance and Singapore Airlines award is identical for certain combinations of routes and cabins.

For example, within the Europe zone:

• Booking SIN-FRA on Singapore Airlines would cost the same number of miles as SIN-FRA-MAD with Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa
• Booking SIN-ZRH on Singapore Airlines would cost the same number of miles as SIN-ZRH-DUB with Singapore Airlines and SWISS

Or within North Asia 2:

• Booking SIN-HND on Singapore Airlines would cost the same number of miles as SIN-HND-ITM on Singapore Airlines and ANA
• Booking SIN-PVG on Singapore Airlines would cost the same number of miles as SIN-PVG-KMG on Singapore Airlines and Air China

Basically, you save the expense of having to book or redeem a separate flight to get to your final destination.

But because the Star Alliance and Singapore Airlines award charts are increasing by different amounts, these instances of parity will be eliminated from 1 November 2025.

Across all regions and cabins, the Star Alliance chart will soon be more expensive than Singapore Airlines.

For example, Star Alliance awards between Singapore and Europe will now cost 114,000 miles, versus 108,500 miles for Singapore Airlines. Mind you, I think it’s still a good deal to top up an extra 5,500 miles for a Business Class ticket within Europe, but it’s not free anymore.

Be careful with speculative bookings

Change and refund fees

A good reason not to be trigger happy about redemptions is because the change and/or cancellation fees paid on speculative bookings could exceed any miles savings. We don’t want to be “miles wise, cash foolish”!

For example, Singapore to Bangkok on Business Saver is increasing from 24,000 miles to 25,000 miles. By booking ahead of the devaluation, you save 1,000 miles, but if you make even one date change, that US$25 (~S$32) will almost certainly outweigh the savings. And if you have to cancel it, that’s US$75 (~S$96) down the drain!

Advantage awards have lower refund fees, and allow for free date changes, so this is less of a concern. In fact, it’s probably one small consolation to having to bite the bullet and cough up the higher prices.

Expiring miles

If you plan to book a speculative award, you should be very careful about expiring miles, because once they’re attached to an award ticket, they can easily be forgotten.

It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where this gets you in trouble. Suppose I have 100,000 miles that expire on 31 December 2025, and to avoid the devaluation, I make a booking on 31 October 2025 for travel in June 2026.

Then suppose March 2026 comes round and I have a change of heart. I want to cancel my flight and get my miles back— only I can’t.

Each mile has a “memory”, and my miles remember that they were due to expire on 31 December 2025. Since that date has passed, I can no longer get them refunded. My only option in this case will be to move the travel date as far as 31 October 2026, the limit of the ticket’s validity period (one year from the date of issuance).

In other words, you need to be more certain about where you want to go when making a booking with expiring miles, because after the expiry date has passed, you can only change the dates, not the destination (that will require a ticket reissuance, and any expired miles will be forfeited).

Conclusion

Singapore Airlines will be carrying out its 2025 KrisFlyer devaluation on 1 November 2025, which give you one more week to get your house in order.

The good news is that you can book tickets as far out as 21 October 2026 (and then move it a further 10 days to 31 October 2026), and even make date changes after that without incurring the new prices– up to one year from the date of ticket issuance. 

It’s understandable if you feel the urge to lock in some bookings, but you should remember that for certain short-haul Saver awards, the cost of making a single change could exceed the value of any miles saved. Moreover, if your booking contains expiring miles, you will not be able to make any changes to destination after the expiry deadline has passed.

All this to say: be smart about it. If your dates are firmed up and the awards are there, lock them in. Take a few smart gambles on the awards that are increasing the most in absolute terms, such as long-haul Advantage awards or Zone 10 awards. And resist the temptation to blindly book everything you see. Any devaluation sucks, but this one isn’t the end of the world.

What awards are you locking in before the devaluation?