I need to book a flight from Singapore to Melbourne in October. Want it to be a direct flight since we will be travelling with a newborn.
I’ve just looked and all premium/biz seats are unavailable for the dates I’d like to travel. Ideally 10th Oct but could consider travelling anytime between 9-11th.
I then looked at Economy and yes there is a direct flight on the 10th but it’s at 7.45am. I’m aware there is an evening flight at 7.45PM but this isn’t available for any of my dates.
Does anyone know if more award seats are likely to be released in the next few weeks? Or will it now be a lottery and I’d just have to rely on someone cancelling their seats to free up availability.
As a Velocity Platinum member, is there any way of getting more award availability on SingAir? Would calling Velocity make any difference to seat availability?
Award availability is always subject to change but generally they get released when the airline decides that it can’t make money selling the ticket for cash otherwise. This generally happens at the beginning of the schedule and close to departure (think 1 week away). There can be some seats released in the middle but we don’t really know when.
Platinum members have access to the same availability as a regular Velocity member. The best way to get access to more space is by transferring your points to Singapore Airlines’ own program for access to better availability especially in premium cabins. However, you’ll be doing this at a loss at a ratio of 1.55:1 Velocity to Krisflyer points.
I have the basic status with velocity and through my recent bookings found that the website listed no seatings available. When i called the contact centre though, they located flights and i was able to book them, and because i couldn’t book online they waived the booking fee.
The best way to get access to more space is by transferring your points to Singapore Airlines’ own program for access to better availability especially in premium cabins.
Any ideas how quickly the Velocity points transfer takes to come through on the Krisflyer site? Is it instantaneous?
I may bite the bullet and go with the transfer to Krisflyer. This will get me into Premium Economy on the 10th Oct with possibly a better flight time of 10pm or midnight (meaning we save on a night’s hotel stay), vs Economy via Velocity on a 7.45am flight.
There are daytime flights but they are showing at ‘waitlist’ on Krisflyer. Does this mean all seats are fully booked, or will these be released at a later date? I note these waitlisted are A380s vs the 10pm/midnight flights which are a B777-300ER.
When I’ve transferred Velocity points to KrisFlyer (which I haven’t done since the transfer rate was devalued to 1:55-1), the transfer was basically instantaneous – it took no more than a few minutes.
“Waitlist” means what it says: there are no seats available now, but there may be some in the future so they’ll let you add your name to the queue. They’re waiting to see how many seats they get money for, and if they find that the cabin is not filling up, or people with KrisFlyer confirmed reward bookings cancel, the people at the front of the queue will be offered reward seats.
The good news is that if a seat becomes available you’ll have no obligation to take it up: in practice, this means you can waitlist seats on several flights on the same day or around the same time, in the hope that something will become available.