Is Singapore Airlines releasing fewer Saver awards?

Back in November 2025, Singapore Airlines introduced a new category of awards called Access, along with a broader devaluation to the KrisFlyer programme. Access awards are dynamically priced and can be prohibitively expensive, but — and this is crucial — they offer last-seat availability. So long as a seat is available for commercial booking, you can redeem it through Access.

SIA took pains to emphasise that Access awards would be offered over and above existing Saver and Advantage seats, and would not reduce current award availability.

	3. Will there be even fewer Saver and Advantage award seats in the future with this new product? Seats available for Access redemption (sic) are over and above the seats available for award flights. -Access FAQs

But if you’ve read the online chatter recently, many people are complaining that premium cabin Saver awards have vanished, and pointing the finger at Access as the culprit. SIA, so the narrative goes, is deliberately throttling Saver awards in order to force members to burn more miles on Access!

Is that true? Well, I’ve been poking into this topic over the past month, and here’s what I think…

Why this question is so hard to answer

First of all, I’d be very wary of anyone who tells you definitively that Singapore Airlines has or hasn’t cut the number of Saver awards. Why? Because it’s impossible to know for certain. I sure don’t, but then again, unless you work at SIA, neither do you.

To put it another way, I can’t simply say “SIA used to release X Saver awards on this route at T-355, and now they release X-1, therefore Saver availability has been cut.”

• How can I be certain that X was indeed the correct number to begin with?
• How do I account for Saver awards which later clear from the waitlist?
• How do I account for Saver awards which open up closer to departure?

Perhaps with enough data points, I could say with some degree of confidence that the number of Saver awards released at T-355 has indeed changed. But I can’t account for the second and third variables, and that’s not even considering further complications like married segment logic (e.g. SIN-X might not be available, but Y-SIN-X might be), additional Saver space released to Solitaire PPS Club and PPS Club members, or seasonality.

Mind you, the same argument works in reverse too (I can’t prove beyond doubt that Saver space hasn’t been cut either), so please, take this with a pinch of salt. Award space is basically a black box, and while we may have anecdotes, conjecture and hypotheses, only SIA knows for sure.

Why don’t I see any Saver awards?

Before we look at some data, it might be good to cover some reasons why Saver awards may not be available, which have nothing to do with the introduction of Access.

Someone else was faster

I realise how unsatisfying an explanation this may be (and in fact, there are some routes which open to waitlist by default— see below), but you have to at least consider the possibility that you were simply beaten to the punch. 

It’s now a common tactic to camp on the SIA website and wait for award seats to be loaded at 8 a.m, and no matter how quick you think you are, there could always be someone quicker.

I’ve had people tell me that can’t be the case, because they checked the seat map and the entire cabin was still open for selection, barring the usual blocked seats. But again that’s not conclusive, because:

• it’s not mandatory to select a seat at the time of booking (in fact, in a fastest-fingers-first situation like this, I imagine you probably wouldn’t select a seat during the booking process, in order to complete it as quickly as possible)
• the person who managed to book the Saver may have been eligible to select a blocked seat (and if it’s true that Saver awards are being selectively released to Solitaire PPS or PPS Club members, then that’s all the more so)

Recent award seats have been opening up into year-end 2026

This is somewhat related to the previous point, but it’s important to highlight that Access awards were introduced at the start of November 2025.

In the months that followed, award seats continued opening up 355 days in advance— running right smack into 2026’s year-end travel peak. In that light, it shouldn’t be surprising that award seats, particularly Saver, have been so hard to find. But that’s really no different from previous years, so while Access awards may be a convenient boogeyman, there might be no award space at all in their absence.

What will be more telling is whether these complaints persist into the new year, once the award calendar starts opening up into the relative lull period of January to March 2027.

Some routes open straight to waitlist

Well before Access awards were introduced, it was already common knowledge that certain routes would open straight to waitlist. Examples include Suites to London (where you’d be lucky to even waitlist on Saver) and Business Class to New Zealand. 

But opening to waitlist isn’t necessarily game over. In the MileChat, there are several data points from regular KrisFlyer members who added themselves to the waitlist at T-355, then cleared it a couple weeks later. Moreover, additional Saver awards can open up closer to departure. For example, a regular KrisFlyer member can find scattered Saver awards between Auckland and Singapore for travel in January and February 2026. 

So it could be that the same number of Saver seats is being released as before, just on a different schedule. For example, instead of opening up 2x Saver awards at T-355, SIA might open the route to waitlist, then subsequently clear 2x Saver awards. But of course, we don’t know how many of those eventually clear, so as far as the average member is concerned, all they see are fewer Savers and more waitlists.

A change in prioritisation

Another possibility we should consider is that Singapore Airlines isn’t releasing fewer Saver award seats— but it is redistributing the priority.

Solitaire PPS Club and PPS Club members have always enjoyed additional access to Saver awards, and it could be the case that SIA is earmarking more seats for this group. 

Tying this to the previous point, it’s not hard to imagine a system logic that gives Solitaire PPS Club and PPS Club members first dibs on Saver seats, while everyone else goes on the waitlist. If a certain period of time passes and those Savers are still available, then the waitlists start to clear.

What does the data suggest?

I’ve been running ad-hoc checks for Saver award space over the past few weeks, both with a Solitaire PPS Club account and a regular KrisFlyer account to give an idea of the two extremes of availability. 

What I’ve found is that Business Saver space wasn’t great — as you would expect given that the current 355-day window runs into 2026’s peak travel season — but it also wasn’t the wasteland some were making it out to be.

In fact, given that it’s December, I was quite surprised that as a regular KrisFlyer member, I could find 2x Business Saver awards on certain dates to places like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and London Gatwick (where a Solitaire could even find 4x Business Savers!)

I was also able to find plenty of dates with 2x Business Saver awards to Australia, at least Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Yes, I know it’s hot in December, but award space is award space…

Harder to find were Saver awards to the USA or Japan (big surprise), so if that’s what you’re gunning for, then yes, I completely understand the sentiment that Savers are MIA. 

I did notice something interesting with USA flights though. Historically speaking, it was quite normal to be able to book 2x Business Saver awards at T-355. Now it’s more common for Saver to be waitlisted, with only Advantage or Access available for immediate confirmation.

But if you wait a few days, Business Saver awards may open up. I noticed this with San Francisco and Seattle, where backtracking a few days from the T-355 cutoff revealed instantly-confirmable Saver awards.

Business Class aside, it’s even possible for a regular KrisFlyer member to find First Saver awards on the B777-300ER from London, Frankfurt, Zurich to Singapore, as I covered in November last year.

As I said earlier, these results don’t prove or disprove anything. Even if I can find 2x Saver seats now doesn’t mean there weren’t more before, but it at least shows that with some flexibility and luck, you can still book them (and is that really so different from any other frequent flyer programme these days?).

For additional data points, a MileLion community member (status: regular KrisFlyer) has compiled a spreadsheet of routes between Singapore and Los Angeles, Milan, Newark, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Seattle. He ran searches 355 days in advance (sometimes at 8 a.m, sometimes later), and recorded the cheapest possible Business Class award that could be booked.

Again, his data set can’t prove that there are more or fewer Saver seats being released (though for what it’s worth, his gut feel is that it’s the latter), though it also supports the idea that Business Saver awards sometimes open a few days after they’re first loaded (see Column G). This might be the “open to waitlist, clear shortly after” pattern that others have noted. 

Use Seats.Aero for faster searching

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For a full guide to Seats.Aero, refer to the post below.

Seats.Aero guide: Find award seats, the fast and painless way

Conclusion

In recent months, there have been numerous complaints about the lack of Singapore Airlines Saver awards, with many blaming the newly-launched Access category for cannibalising existing space.

I’m not so certain this is true. It’s always been very difficult to get Business Saver awards to popular destinations like Japan and New Zealand, especially during the year-end travel peak that T-355 now leads into, with or without Access awards in the picture.

I do think there’s merit to the claim that more routes are opening straight to waitlist, especially for the USA, but I think what’s happening here is that Singapore Airlines is prioritising Saver awards for Solitaire PPS Club and PPS Club members. The fact that Saver awards do pop up later, and regular KrisFlyer members report their waitlists clearing, suggests that the system gives elites first dibs, before opening it to everyone else should they pass on the opportunity. 

And of course, it has to be said that the number of people playing the miles game in Singapore has steadily grown over the past few years (those bloggers ruin everything!), so there’s more competition for the same number of seats.

If you’re frustrated trying to find award seats on SIA, then this might be a good time to pivot to transferrable points currencies which open up redemption opportunities with other frequent flyer programmes like Asia Miles, EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, and Qatar Privilege Club.

What patterns have you noticed about Singapore Airlines Saver space recently?

(Cover photo: Plane’s Portrait Aviation Media)