Singapore Airlines continues to be one of the highest rated airlines in the industry, offering a luxurious experience in a world where other airlines seem to constantly be cutting back. It has been on airline bucket list for quite some time now, and when I saw the opportunity to fly with them back home from Cambodia using only credit card points, I jumped on the chance. Of course it was too good to be true, and I learned the hard way how to navigate Singapore Airline’s infamous waitlist award flight system.
Researching Flights
Let’s start at the beginning. I booked a very impulsive, last minute group tour with Intro Travel to Vietnam and Cambodia. As an actor during a historically long strike who also happened to be going through some personal issues following a breakup, I knew I needed to do something epic with my newly found free time other than sit in my room and be utterly depressed.
I had the time, but financially I was starting to feel the effects of not working for a few months. Luckily, after saving up for an entire year, I had enough credit card points to fly me to Asia and back for free by my calculations.
I spent an entire day coming up with the best strategy to stretch my points the furthest. I would book my flight to Hanoi through my credit card’s travel portal where I would get 25% more value than a cash back redemption. The airline I wanted to fly with Starlux, was not a transfer partner of Chase, so this was the only option.
As for my return flight, I found what I believed would be a flight of a lifetime—Cambodia to Los Angeles with 6 hour layover in Singapore. I’ve wanted to explore Changi Airport in Singapore for over a decade at this point and I’ve also wanted to fly with Singapore Airlines. There were cheaper options available with two layovers instead of one, but seeing that this flight ticked off two bucket list items, I splurged. I’d be using points anyways I though, so it didn’t really matter.
What is a Waitlist Award Flight?
There was one caveat I noticed. When playing around with the website to book award flights, if I tried to book from Cambodia to Los Angeles, it would appear as a “waitlist” flight. I never encountered a thing like a waitlist flight before, since airlines like Delta and United and Air France and so forth either let you pay with money or points for essentially every seat on their flights. I did some research and discovered Singapore Airlines and a couple of other international airline companies reserve only a handful of award tickets on each flight.
You can find out details on their official website, but to summarize—if all award flights are booked, you have the option to waitlist an award flight on a Singapore Airline flight. You can book these flights as soon as the flight schedule is released up to a year in advance all the way until three weeks before departure when the window for reserving a waitlist flight closes.
Two weeks before your departure flight, you will be notified whether or not Singapore Airlines decided to approve your waitlist flight. You need enough miles to cover the flight in order to waitlist, but they do not subtract miles from your account until you officially get off waitlist and decide to confirm your booking. Therefore, you can waitlist yourself for multiple flights. Since it is a gamble and very few people actually get off of the waitlist (there is no official statistic, but it’s estimated only 20% of waitlist flights turn into actual bookings) it’s best to cast a wide net and apply for all the flights you’d be willing to consider.
The Technical Glitch
Back to my personal experience now that you know what a waitlist award flight with Singapore Airlines entails– If you know me, you know I don’t give up easily. Having my heart set on this flight, I thought there had to be a way around this. I checked the seating availability and both flights where still half empty, which I found odd. Normal people, unlike me, book travel plans months in advance. With half empty planes just over three weeks out, you’d think they’d be inclined release more award flight tickets.
I played around more with their website and discovered that the issue was the Cambodia to Singapore leg. From Singapore to Los Angeles the flight was listed as “available”. However, it would cost the same amount of miles plus another $370 dollars for the first flight to get me to Singapore from Cambodia. I needed this to be completely covered by miles though. It would be a decent backup plan, but not ideal.
After hours of clicking everywhere on Singapore Airlines’ site and trying different browsers and incognito mode, I noticed something. If I booked the same flight, but checked the “complimentary stopover” option for award flight tickets and just flew out the same day, it changed the entire itinerary to an “available” flight. I tried this several more times to confirm, and it worked! I was ecstatic! This flight would normally cost $1,700 for a one way ticket, yet I could get it for only 70,000 points now that I found loophole, or so I thought.
Transfering Credit Card Points
I created a KrisFlyer account (Singapore Airlines’ frequent flyer program) and transferred 70,000 points from Chase. Most transfers to airline partners happen instantaneously, but of course Singapore Airlines, being the stinker that they are, had to be one of the rare “up to 7 business day” ones. With me frantically getting ready to take off to Vietnam in just a week, I anxiously checked my KrisFlyer balance three times a day for the next few days, as well as if the flight was still available.
When my points finally transferred over on day three, I rushed to my computer to reserve my award flight. All the way through, it appeared as an “available” flight. When I got to the passenger details page, a message saying “You’re on the redemption waitlist” appeared on my screen.
My heart dropped to my stomach. There was no way this was happening. I tried again….and then again… and then again all with the same confirmation page appearing before my eyes. I just transferred almost a year’s worth of credit card points for this. Once you transfer your points from a credit card to a partner airline or hotel, there is no way to transfer them back. My points were now stuck in the bank of Singapore Airlines with a 3 year expiration date.
Singapore Airlines Online Customer Service
I screen recorded and screenshot everything on my end and immediately hopped on their customer service chat to show that a technical glitch was showing this flight as available until the very end of the booking process, and therefore should be honored. I was met with “flights are never confirmed until they are booked” and some mumbo jumbo about there always being a risk. I tried again and again and even sent off an email to customer service hoping at least someone would recognize this glitch and manually honor the booking. No such luck.
I then played the waiting game, hoping my waitlist flight would turn to a confirmed flight. Let me just say, I’m not good at the waiting game. A few days passed and there were no notifications about my flight. I know they have up until two weeks before the departure date to confirm either way, but I naively hoped there was a chance it would happen sooner rather than later.
Multiple Waitlist Flights
I’d be almost halfway into my trip in Southeast Asia by the time I would find out. I didn’t want to have to worry all that time whether or not I’d have to find $1,700 in my budget to pay for a flight that should have been free. While I was waiting to find out, I decided to find every other imaginable flight schedule with Singapore Airlines that would get me back home. Every single one I found ended me up on another waitlist.
By the time I was done, I was on 6 waitlisted flights, including one through Singapore and Tokyo with such long layovers (not long enough to leave the airport comfortably to explore, but long enough to drive you crazy waiting in an airport terminal) that my journey home would take 48 hours.
Singapore Airlines Phone Customer Service
It was just a few days before I departed to Hanoi that I decided I’m going to call Singapore Airlines and start begging, hoping maybe this time someone in customer service would take mercy on me. Their website actually clearly states that they cannot manually take anyone off of waitlist, so don’t bother calling. Do I listen? No! I hoped because my case was of a technical glitch (or loophole, if you will) that they’d might make the exception, especially since I had proof.
When I called, you could barely hear the soft spoken Singaporean representative who was clearly in a noisy call center. I tried explaining the situation politely, but grew frustrated with how bad the connection was. She offered to call me back, and did, but it didn’t help much. As we struggled to understand each other through the poor connection paired with the loud background noise, she followed the steps to try to book the flight on her end to see if it will indeed show up as available or not. The phone cracked and we lost connection.
I almost accepted that there was no hope and all of this was just a waste of time. She then surprisingly called back a second time and said she will honor the flight, and through the crackling connection, I was able to give her my payment details (you still need to pay tax on award flights, which came out to $94). Shortly after, I finally got the email confirmation that I was booked. Boy, was I glad that I didn’t lose faith and kept pursing the cause.
The Outcome
I celebrated so hard that all the stress and effort paid off in the end, and I was going to fly round trip to Asia for free. That was until several hours later when I realized she booked the wrong day. Luckily, once you have an award flight, it’s easy to make changes and was able to call back and get the flight and day I actually needed. Now, I was able to relax and enjoy my trip, knowing my flights were taken care of.
The downside to all this stress and hassle was that I was not going to make any changes to that f$%king flight. Even though there were several opportunities to stay in Asia a little longer and join newly made friends on their travels, I had to say no, and it broke my heart. I was not going to mess with this flight again no matter what, out of fear I’d screw it up and be stuck literally paying for my mistake.
Testing Out Probability
Out of curiosity and as a test to know in the future, I did not cancel any of my waitlisted flights. Since I booked this one through the phone, all my other waitlisted flight including this same itinerary stayed in my KrisFlyer account. Exactly two weeks before the flight date, I got text after text, notifying me of the status of each of the flights. Out of the six waitlisted flights, two opened for confirmation within 24 hours and the rest were automatically cancelled by the system. Ironically, the flight I already reserved was one of those two flights.
It’s the Principal of It
If I flew frequently with Singapore Airlines, none of this would be an issue really. I aware when you travel often, not every flight can be free, but there were several factors that made me pursue this waitlist award flight so relentlessly:
- I never flew Singapore Airlines before, and God only knows when I will fly with them again.
- Miles expire after three years, so I would have to force myself to fly with them or lose out on over $1,500 worth of miles.
- I budgeted for this trip to Southeast Asia without factoring in flight costs, since I could cover any possible flight with points alone.
- I am a person who says “It’s the principal of it” too much for my own good.
Now, I’m not sure if they fixed the “add a complimentary stopover on an award ticket” glitch to get around a waitlisted flight. If you wanted to test it out and try to find a merciful customer service rep on the phone, that is your prerogative. I don’t recommend it though. You could take the normal award flight route and waitlist yourself on multiple flights hoping there will be chance to get a confirmed booking two weeks before your departure. It is a huge gamble, and if you are flying with someone or a family, your chances are far slimmer than flying solo (which are pretty damn slim to begin with).
I truly hope Singapore Airlines will change their award flight system to match status quo of other frequent flyer programs where all seats can be paid with either cash or miles, instead of reserving only a handful of award tickets. For a luxury airline with numerous accolades, it’s disappointing that they have such a dated and frustrating award flight system. With hundreds of articles, blog posts, and Reddit feeds criticizing their system, one would think they’d take notice and evolve past it.
