Singapore Airlines launched Access awards this morning, a new type of KrisFlyer award which is dynamically priced based on factors like seat availability, route, and seasonality.
But just because Access award prices move in tandem with commercial ticket prices does not mean they vary linearly.
In fact, The MileLion Community has been obsessively analysing the Access pricing system, and what we’ve found is that there’s actually an unpublished award chart that Singapore Airlines uses to price Access redemptions!
First Class
There does not appear to be any kind of variation for First Class Access awards. These are consistently priced at 80% more than Advantage.
Business Class
Business Class has four different tiers of Access awards:
- Tier 1: 25% higher than Advantage
- Tier 2: 50% higher than Advantage
- Tier 3: 80% higher than Advantage
- Tier 4: 100% higher than Advantage
Premium Economy Class
Premium Economy Class has two different tiers of Access awards:
- Tier 1: 30% higher than Saver
- Tier 2: 60% higher than Saver
Remember, there are no Advantage awards for Premium Economy.
Economy Class
Like First Class, there does not appear to be any kind of variation for Economy Class Access awards. These are consistently priced at 30% more than Advantage
What does this mean?
First Class
The 80% premium over Advantage means that Access awards will be complete and utter fantasy for most people. Unless you’re spending ridiculous amounts of money — either legitimately or through manufactured spending — there’s simply no way you can justify the kind of miles that Access awards ask for.
That said, it does create the possibility of redeeming an entire Suites cabin with miles (yes, yes, I know Miles + Cash exists), which would be fun…
Business Class
It’s a very different story in Business Class, where Access awards start at a modest 25% premium over Advantage.
I could see some people being willing to pay that, simply for the certainty of immediate confirmation, or because they absolutely need to travel on those particular dates. It gets much harder to stomach as you move up the tiers, however, and I’d consider Tiers 3 and 4 to be in the same kind of fantasy land as First Class Access awards for most people.Â
Premium Economy
Given that Premium Economy usually costs 70-80% of the miles required for Business Class, yet represents such a huge comfort difference, I’m not really an advocate of redeeming miles for this cabin.Â
Instead of paying 30% more for Access awards, I’d sooner look at other frequent flyer programmes, or even reposition myself for discounted Business Class tickets.
Economy
Yeah, no.
It’s already marginal to redeem Economy Saver awards, and if those weren’t available, I would sooner buy a cash ticket with a different airline than redeem Advantage, let alone Access!
Conclusion
While KrisFlyer’s new Access awards are ostensibly based on dynamic pricing, it appears the airline is still using an unpublished award chart to keep pricing within fixed bands for the moment.
Since this chart is unpublished, there’s no guarantee it will stay the same forever. In fact, it most likely won’t. One big downside of dynamic pricing is that airlines are free to tweak it whenever they want, because the price is whatever they say it is!
That said, for the moment Access awards will cost anywhere from 25% to 100% more than Advantage awards, meaning they could either be a reasonable splurge, or completely unattinable.
Many thanks to The MileLion Community for helping me to piece this together!
I am sorry, but I am going to call out SQ as liars! They said that Business Advantage award redemption would go up by 20% max. The below itineraries have gone up by 32 and 33%.
Grrrrrrr!!
Last week, I priced MEL – LAX (stopover NRT) at 338K for 2 ppl. in Business Advantage. Today it’s 448K.
I also priced JFK – MEL (stopover FRA) at 380K for 2 ppl. in Business Advantage. Today it’s 502k.
where and when did they state that?
https://www.singaporeair.com/content/dam/sia/web-assets/pdfs/ppsclub-krisflyer/krisflyer/progupdates/AdjustmentstoAwardRatesForFlightRedemptionsandUpgrades.pdf
“All figures above represent approximate changes for one-way Singapore Airlines flight awards between Singapore and the corresponding regions”. stop blaming others
Approximate??? Approximately 20% is not 33%! 22% maybe!
I don’t know why SQ goes to all the effort that must be involved to price all these dynamic fares and advertise them for sale. Only a TINY fraction will ever be sold. Does it justify the effort? Highly unlikely.
knowing how state owned companies here works…most likely someone’s promotion project lol
Why do you think there are endless office towers? What does all these staff do?
They will kill the availability of saver to just 1 seat per flight regradless of first or economy
So for those who wants to redeem for whole kampong, bye bye. Fun…..
Probably some washed out scholar or some ex-BCG all talk no action CONsultant who joined SQ suggested it as a good idea to goh choon pong in his weekly meetings.