Rewind: The infamous KrisFlyer Full award

In 2025, Singapore Airlines launched Access redemptions, a new type of dynamically-priced award that promised far better availability than the existing Saver and Advantage categories.

Access awards went live on 1 November, and it didn’t take long before the internet was awash with screenshots of heart-stopping redemption costs, such as a million-mile round-trip to New York (or roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon — four times).

For many newly-minted miles chasers, this felt like uncharted territory. But to KrisFlyer veterans, the whole episode had a sense of deja vu, because more than a decade ago,  Singapore Airlines had experimented with a similar concept called Full awards.

How did Full awards come about?

Prior to 2008, KrisFlyer offered two types of awards: Saver and Unrestricted. Saver awards were cheaper, but had less availability. Unrestricted awards were more expensive, but had better availability — think of these as the modern-day equivalent of Advantage awards.

In September 2008, Singapore Airlines unveiled some enhancements to the KrisFlyer programme:

• One-way redemptions were reduced from 70% to 50% of the round-trip cost
• Unrestricted awards were renamed Standard awards
• A new type of award called Full was introduced

The selling point of Full awards was that they would receive greater access to award seats, which, the airline took pains to emphasise, would be in addition to the seats allocated for Saver and Standard awards (sounds familiar?).

Wanted to redeem miles for London in the summer? Germany during Christmas? Tokyo during the cherry blossom season? No problem — the Full award had you covered!

What Singapore Airlines wasn’t saying quite so loudly, however, was that this flexibility came at a price. A very hefty one.

How much did Full awards cost?

A lot.

Here’s how much KrisFlyer Full awards cost, at the time of their launch in September 2008.

Some of these figures are truly frightening: 83,000 miles for Economy Class to Sydney. 315,000 miles for Business Class to the UK. 588,000 miles for First Class to New York. True, there was a 15% discount for online redemptions, but even so, these were simply eye-watering prices.

And I’ve not even gotten to the best part yet. Even the stratospheric cost of a First Class full award would not get you into the Suites cabin, because Singapore Airlines had a strict “no-redemptions” policy for its flagship product.

Aircraft Type	Cabin	Award Types
B777-300ER	Economy	Saver  Standard  Full
	Business	Standard  Full
	First	Standard  Full
A340-500	Business	Standard  Full
A380-800	Economy	Saver  Standard  Full
	Business	Standard  Full
	Suites	Not Allowed
All other aircraft types	All cabins	Saver  Standard  Full

This restriction was only lifted two years later, when Suites redemptions were introduced with “Beyond Full” pricing. To fly in Suites from Singapore to Sydney and London, it would cost you — brace yourself — 550,000 miles and 1,050,000 miles respectively. Oh, and this award could only be booked over the phone through membership services, so no 15% online booking discount applied!

As expected, the reaction to Full awards ran the gamut.

For some, the reaction was visceral. Just one year earlier, KrisFlyer had devalued its award chart and also blocked Saver redemptions for the latest First and Business Class seats, so Full awards felt like another slap in the face. There were even hysterical claims (hysteria, on the internet?!) that Full awards would eventually replace Saver and Standard altogether, and by this time next year, we’d all be paying a billion miles for a shuttle flight to Kuala Lumpur.

Others reacted with a shrug, saying that so long as Full awards didn’t touch Saver and Standard inventory, they couldn’t care less about its existence. It certainly helped that Full awards were introduced alongside a reduction in one-way awards from 70% to 50% of the round-trip cost, which many members were excited to see.

And — whisper it quietly — for those who were flush with miles from business expenses, manufactured spending, or other dark arts, Full awards were actually a cheat code to get last-seat availability on whatever flight they wanted (SIA never advertised Full awards as last-seat availability, but that appeared to be the case).

Mind you, that wasn’t the final word on Full awards. During the 2012 KrisFlyer devaluation, even the Full award chart wasn’t spared, with awards increasing by up to 8% (though to be fair, some awards, predominantly in Economy Class, saw reductions of 8-13%).

But with awards now topping out at 646,000 miles, it had gotten to the point where Full awards were just so absurdly priced, they were used more as a punchline than anything else (commonly heard: you’d have to be a “Full” to redeem at those prices).

Besides, some of the figures on the Full chart truly felt randomly-generated. For example, the cost of a First Class Full award between Sydney and Sao Paulo (947,000 miles) was more than the sum of a Sydney to Singapore and Singapore to Sao Paulo award (939,000 miles). And, as some members pointed out, given these redemption costs, it would make more sense to buy a cash ticket and cover it by redeeming credit card points for statement credit instead!

Therefore, it came as little surprise when in May 2016, KrisFlyer removed the Full awards category. Members holding Full awards would be rebooked into a Standard award, and have the difference in miles refunded to them.

This actually turned out to be a great hack for members who had sufficient miles, since they could book a Full award on a flight where Standard awards were unavailable, and get reimbursed for the difference anyway.

And that was the end of that chapter…for a while.

How do Full awards compare to Access awards?

In August 2025, Singapore Airlines announced that a new type of award called Access would be introduced in November, alongside revisions (read: devaluations) to the KrisFlyer programme.

Does that sound vaguely familiar? It should, because Access awards are basically the second coming of Full awards. You can be free from the limitations of Saver and Advantage allocations — for a price.

The key difference between Full awards and Access awards is how they are priced.

Full awards had a published award chart, so you always knew what the price would be.

Access award charts do not have a published award chart, and are dynamically priced — but not in the true sense of the word (e.g. a S$1 increase in airfare does not result in a proportional increase in the mileage requirement). Instead, they follow an unpublished award chart with up to four possible prices, depending on cabin.

• For First Class and Economy Class, there is one single Access price that applies whether the entire cabin is empty, or whether there’s just a single seat left
• For Business Class and Premium Economy Class, the Access price depends on which commercial booking classes are left

And of course, it’s not just how awards are priced, but what they’re priced at. It says a lot about how absurdly expensive Full awards were that despite the 16-year gap, there are still cases where Full is almost as expensive, or even more expensive than Access!

That’s even more striking when you compare the earning opportunities then and now. Today, we have 100,000 miles welcome offers, 10 mpd with Kris+ and Pelago, and 4 mpd cards for every conceivable category of spending. None of these existed in 2008, and you couldn’t even get a Citi PremierMiles Card unless you earned at least S$80,000 a year!

Conclusion

Full awards were truly insane. So why did they even exist?

Part of me thinks that Full awards were created so that whenever members complained about the lack of Saver space, Singapore Airlines could say: well, you can still redeem your miles — for Full awards. But that’s kind of like telling a starving man there’s plenty of caviar in the supermarket.

I’m genuinely curious to know how many of these awards were redeemed over their eight-year existence, who was doing the redemptions, and how, given the limited earning opportunities back then, they were generating those miles.

So the next time someone complains to you about Access pricing, just remember: the old-timers have seen far worse!

Did you ever redeem a Full award?

(Cover photo: Planes Portrait Aviation Media)