Many of us dream about traveling in a Singapore Airlines First Class Suite on an A380. But we found a way to make that dream come true. We (the very royal We) recently had the opportunity to fly in seat 2A on Singapore Airlines flight #26 from Frankfurt to JFK. Jealous? Most of our friends were. So let us share a little secret with you, because we didn’t pay the regular $6,648.00 fare to book it. Instead, we used just 47,375 frequent traveler points to do it. And so can you. Here’s how:
1. You’ll need KrisFlyer Miles
While Singapore Airlines is a StarAlliance carrier, they don’t load First Class Suites for partner redemption. So you’ll need to get a KrisFlyer account, and earn some miles. But you don’t need to fly Singapore Airlines to do it. You can earn them on any StarAlliance partner. You can also transfer them in from three very popular frequent traveler programs: American Express Membership Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest and LeClub Accorhotels (check singaporeair.com for additional partners in markets outside of the U.S.)
2. Look for the Saver Award redemption
Singapore has three redemption levels for award tickets. Between New York and Frankfurt, you can use 67,500 miles for Saver, 130,000 for Standard, and 460,000 for Full. Plan ahead for the best chance of scoring a Saver award. Another bonus: when you book your award ticket online, you get a 15% discount. So that 67,500 becomes 57,375. (Online redemption levels start at 91,375 for Los Angeles to Singapore, and 31,875 for Hong Kong to Singapore — 3 hours and 50 minutes of inflight luxury for less than a standard domestic round trip award on U.S. carriers!)
3. Use the SPG Mileage Transfer Bonus
When you convert 20,000 SPG points to airline miles, you get a 25% bonus. So we got 50,000 KrisFlyer points for only 40,000 SPG points. Note that the you can only transfer up to 79,999 SPG points per transfer, so the maximum transfer you can make for the maximum bonus is 60,000 points for 75,000 miles. You can only make one transfer per 24-hour period, and transfers can take up to three weeks to post to your Singapore Krisflyer account. (Mine took a week.)
4. Top-up with Membership Rewards Points
Our Membership Rewards transfer was nearly instantaneous. We transferred 8,000 Membership Rewards points on top of the 40,000 SPG points, for a total of 58,000 KrisFlyer points, redeemed 57,375 for the First Class Suite, and have 625 KrisFlyer points waiting for our next trip.
The LGBTQ Travel Expert. Educator. Speaker. Author. 