SQ started making partner award space available for online redemption via Krisflyer on December 7, but the roll out was a mess and only two airlines, Lufthansa and Air NZ, were available on the day of launch.
I reached out to SQ on launch day and was told that:
We’d like to share that online redemption for Star Alliance carriers are being progressively rolled out. Please contact KrisFlyer Membership Services if your preferred Star Alliance airline does not appear in your search results. In such instances, service fees for Star Alliance redemptions done offline will be waived. Thank you.
Well, Matthew and I have been playing around with the booking engine in the days since and am pleased to report that we’ve found more partner airline awards now available for booking. Here’s what we found:
EVA Air
EVA is great at releasing award space to partner airlines, and you can finally find their seats on Krisflyer’s online booking engine. Here’s a sample routing to YVR via TPE in business class.
EVA has a very excellent full flat business class product that it operates on routes to Singapore, and should be your choice over SQ’s awful A330s.
Air Canada and Air China
This is a business class booking I found, also to YVR, combining Air China’s A330 and Air Canada’s 77W.
Don’t be so quick to pooh pooh Air China, they might not be an aspirational airline but they’ll at least give you a full flat seat on their A330s. Check out The Shutterwhale’s review here.
Air Canada has an excellent reverse herringbone business class product on their 77Ws and I’m looking forward to giving this a try in 2018.
Turkish Airlines
Turkish Airline business class space was found between IST and JFK.
I’ve reviewed TK’s business class before and it’s one of the more interesting experiences you’ll get in the sky. Electronic candlelight dining in a darkened cabin with a personal chef? Yes please.
SAS
Intra-Europe business class might not be a dream redemption, but hopefully the fact that we could find this means there’s long haul space to be found too.
No point showing you photos of intra-Europe business class, but here’s SAS’s gorgeous long haul business class on the A330. I really, really need to figure out how to try this.
Aegean
Again, not what you’d call a must-fly, but it’s good to know that Aegean space is appearing for online redemptions too.
Airlines we couldn’t find
We didn’t find any award space on the following carriers, but it doesn’t mean it’s not out there. If you find any give a holler on the comments below
- Air India (heh)
- South African Airways
- Swiss (but they hardly release award space to anyone)
- United
- ANA
- LOT Polish Airlines
- Asiana
- Brussels Airlines
- Thai Airways (surprising)
- Shenzhen Airlines
- TAP Portugal
- Croatian
- Avianca
- Austrian
- Juneyao
- Ethiopian (what’s really interesting is that SQ’s online booking engine doesn’t even recognise the ADD airport code)
- Adria (ditto, SQ doesn’t recognise Ljubljana LJU)
- Copa (SQ doesn’t recognise PTY)
We’ll continue to monitor this and update this post as more partner awards come online.
Does Eva block redemptions on long haul? Or open it only in the last few weeks? Trying to book BKK to LHR for June and don’t see any availability.
Certain routes dont get all the permutations and combinations of flights. i.e BKK LHR on Eva
In my experience no, Aeroplan has Eva space all the time. Obviously at like 300+ there’s more space, but at least from YVR/SFO/LAX/SEA there’s always good economy availability (except maybe at holidays? I haven’t tried) and pretty good business availability. If you can’t get one city you can usually get one of the others and take a connecting flight. I’ve never really looked at IAH/ORD or anywhere else cuz I live at YVR. As far as outside of those flights, BR seems to give up some of the best availability too. I know when I was looking to fly LHR-BKK… Read more »
Would appreciate if Aaron could state the dates that he saw the *A availability. I was trying out various destinations and dates e.g. Sin – IST and I couldnt find any TK flights available.
you can see the dates in the screenshots
Doesn’t recognize MDE either, one of my frequented airports. I tried searching for Avianca space that expertflyer says is there, and it doesn’t show up. But I don’t know what to make of this. My experience with calling Krisflyer is that they can’t see the same availability. I had an entire booking mapped out YVR-EZE when I called and she could only see the United space and not the Air Canada space with the exception of one flight. All flights I had lined up with Aeroplan and Expertflyer. I have no idea what to believe now, it seems like it… Read more »
If you’re going to book Avianca why not search and reserve with LifeMiles instead?
i search on kvstool. but it’s notoriously temperamental and costs money. when it works though, it’s amazing.
KVS Tool itself is very well-tempered, but, sometimes, the airline systems are not.
If you are experiencing any issues while searching for Award Availability, please do not hesitate to get in-touch, so we can look into the matter.
Can you comment if it is even worth to redeem KF miles for non-SQ flights? Would it be a ‘waste’?
Aaron has posted many times on that topic. Google ‘Milelion star alliance’.
More partners appearing online now, like NH and TG.