Singapore Airlines adds new restrictions on award searching

Unlike some frequent flyer programmes which require a minimum miles balance or prior account activity to search for awards, Singapore Airlines has historically imposed almost no restrictions. You could create a brand-new KrisFlyer account for Miley McMilesFace and start searching immediately.

However, recent reports suggest this has changed, and a minimum balance of 1,000 KrisFlyer miles is now required before any searches can be performed. 

This appears to be an attempt to combat so-called “burner accounts” used by award search tools, which frequently query the system for availability. That said, it could also affect legitimate users — though probably not in Singapore.

Singapore Airlines adds new award search restrictions

According to reports on r/awardtravel, Singapore Airlines has been progressively rolling out new restrictions on award flight searches, which prevent accounts with zero mileage balances from performing searches. 

Attempts to search will return an error message stating “Unable to proceed”.

“Unable to proceed because your current miles balance is insufficient for flight redemption searches. To view available flights and the miles required, browse flight options“

Clicking on “browse flight options” brings you to the AI-powered “Flight Recommender” tool, which is pretty much useless because it doesn’t tell you anything about the flight schedule, the taxes, or the number of seats available (no matter how many people you ask it to search for, it will always return results for one adult). What I’d give to have the award redemption map back!

It appears that you will require a minimum balance of 1,000 miles to perform a search, regardless of past account activity. I should also highlight that this change is being implemented in stages, hence the conflicting reports from some users that their accounts aren’t affected. 

To be clear: this does not mean you can only search for flights which you have a sufficient miles balance to book. For example, if you have 1,985 miles — as the MileCub does — you can still search for Suites tickets to London.

If you’re affected by this new restriction, the obvious workaround would be to search for award seats by calling up KrisFlyer membership services, though this is a much more manual and time-consuming process than simply searching online.

Why this restriction?

This restriction is clearly intended to reduce the volume of search requests, especially from automated award search tools which regularly ping the site for award space using burner accounts, eating up server resources in the process.

Award tools which leverage your personal account to search should still work — provided your account has more than 1,000 miles. One example is the HeyMax Award Companion, which allows users to search up to 57 days of award space in a single query. 

Here’s the real question though: do you really want to risk your own account — and its miles balance — by using it for high-volume searching? HeyMax says that “normal use” is unlikely to get you in trouble, but ultimately they’re not Singapore Airlines, and can’t guarantee that no harm will befall your account.

Because of this risk, many people created burner accounts to use with the Award Companion, which will no longer work with the new restriction.

In any case, this new restriction has the potential to impact legitimate users as well, particularly those who use their KrisFlyer accounts as temporary “holding boxes”, transferring only the exact number of miles required for a booking, and keeping a zero balance otherwise. The members most likely to be inconvenienced are those based overseas, who store their dry powder in transferrable credit card points — though it should be said that 1,000 miles is not much of a hurdle requirement anyway.

I doubt that most Singapore-based members will be affected, because I can’t think of many people who keep zero-balance KrisFlyer accounts. With credit card conversions, Kris+, KrisShop, and Pelago, anyone who is reasonably engaged with KrisFlyer should have at least 1,000 miles in their account. 

Moreover, this isn’t anywhere as bad as the other award search restrictions we’ve seen. EVA Air has a positively byzantine system for redeeming miles for multiple travellers, which requires downloading and signing a document, registering nominees, transferring miles to them, then searching for your companion through your own account. 

More recently, Qatar Airways introduced a new restriction that blocks members from searching for more than one award seat, until they unlock the ability to add redemption nominees by crediting at least one commercial flight to Qatar Privilege Club. This is a significantly harder requirement to meet than accruing a mere 1,000 miles.

I’ve reached out to Singapore Airlines for a comment, and will update this article when I receive a reply.

Conclusion

Singapore Airlines is rolling out new award search restrictions for KrisFlyer accounts with zero balances, requiring a minimum of 1,000 miles before searches can be performed.

This seems to strike a reasonable balance between curbing automated scraping activity and minimising inconvenience for genuine users. Most KrisFlyer members here are unlikely to notice the change, and in any case, it should be simple enough to accrue 1,000 miles through Kris+ or the many other on-ground earning opportunities.