Singapore Airlines Award Success: Christchurch – Bangkok & Hong Kong – Sao Paulo

One of my one-way tickets ended in Christchurch this month and I decided to redeem some of the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer stash that I had accrued over the years.

Singapore Airlines offers 15% discount for online award redemptions on its own metal (you can likely get this over the phone as well if the online booking tool is not cooperating) and, at least for the routes that I had a look, the availability was quite good.

I rarely redeem anything more than few days/two weeks before my scheduled departure, as I often change my plans.

Christchurch – Bangkok

I had a dental appointment coming in Bangkok and there were not very good paid options out from Christchurch (reasonably paid). There was a daytime flight on Singapore Airlines that perfectly connected to a flight to Bangkok.

The price was 46,750 miles and 291.96 NZD of which 259.10 was the fuel surcharge.

This was retrofitted 777 with 1-2-1 seating and was one of the worst daytime flights that I have had on SQ. The entertainment system was not functioning properly. The picture quality was horrible and selection of movies bad. There were no internet connectivity on this flight at all.

Hong Kong – Sau Paulo with a stopover in Barcelona

Original ticket:

Updated one:

This was one of the more “challenging” SQ awards due to limitations on their website.

The award availability existed, but the online system was not able to price a stopover in Barcelona. I decided to ticketed as it is and just call in the change afterwards. How wrong I was. It took three phone calls and 2:45 hours to have the stopover correctly added. I was polite and persisted that It can be done, although I was probably told 20+ times that It cannot.

This was 106,675 KrisFlyer miles and 2,090 HKD in taxes/fees + another 1,123 HKD to ad the Barcelona stopover.

I could have ended the trip in Europe, but decided to have this BCN-GRU leg as an “option” for next year (not sure when I’ll take it) as continuing to Sao Paulo was only 5K more.

Conclusion

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles can come very handy if you redeem for their own metal flights especially in F that is not often available with partner currencies. I was surprised how reasonable the fuel surcharges were for the CHC-BKK flights.

Hong Kong regulates fuel surcharges that airlines can start for flights originating from the city. Could have been higher had I chosen another departure point in Asia except Manila where they are prohibited altogether.