A LoyaltyLobby reader forwarded us an email that she had received from Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer extending her Gold status for an additional 12 months which is also reflected in the online account.
Note that there doesn’t appear to be a policy page on the Singapore Airlines website, instead they inform eligible members via email.
Singapore Airlines has extended KrisFlyer elite statuses to members whose travel has been affected by the coronavirus outbreak last year as well. They also reduced the amount of elite miles required at their discretion (I wrote about that last year in this article).
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is one of the few programs that doesn’t run by calendar year but a floating membership year depending on the month of enrollment.
The reader has now received an email from Singapore Airlines about the KrisFlyer Gold membership:
This is surprising because there weren’t may miles credited to this account except one longhaul flights from Europe to North America, even with the 25,000 goodwill miles KrisFlyer previously posted to the account that’s nowhere near the 50,000 required for SIA KrisFlyer Gold.
This account has it’s registered address outside Singapore and the membership expiry of the KrisFlyer Gold Status is now reflected as March 2022.
Members might want to check their email around the time of their annual review/renewal date as they might be in for a surprise.
This week John wrote about several promotional options (see here and here) KrisFlyer has rolled out to help members obtain sufficient miles for a status level or renew it. As this case shows that might not even be necessary.
I’m not sure SIA is doing themselves a favor by creating these arbitrary decisions regarding status extensions and floating membership years. One coherent policy that deals with this exact situation would be a better fix. Same like how British Airways reduced the required points for everybody by 30% and constantly has to adjust their extension policy for members, all of whose membership expires on different dates over the year.
Conclusion
This will definitely help our reader over the next year in case airlines will finally start flying and borders open again at some point. Of course if things remain grounded then it’s not much of a deal unless they auto-extend the membership of all members yet again.
Kudos to Singapore Airlines for extending the status of at least some members whose travel may have been affected with the ongoing public health situation that is still grounding most international passenger traffic for over twelve months.
