I am in the process of trying to book my fiancé and I one way flights from Brisbane to Europe in Business with Singapore next year using Velocity points (planning on returning either first or business using Qantas points).
When searching for availability through Velocity I can never find 2 x business rewards on the same flights (plenty of availability for a single ticket around that time next September. I understand from reading various PH articles this may be Singapore restricting award availability to Velocity members.
Does anyone know- Are Singapore likely to open up additional seats for Velocity members?
If not we have just enough point to transfer to Krisflyer and redeem this way to guarantee the seats. However I can not seem to find how to search for reward availability as I don’t have any points. IS there a way to search for availability before transferring points over to krisflyer?
Does anyone have any other advice for a business award redemption with other airline using Velocity points? I have come across Ethiad availability but the taxes are way higher than Singapore which was the reason I originally ruled it out.
You can search for availability of Singapore Airlines’ flights by creating a Krisflyer account. From there you can search on singaporeair.com, you do not need sufficient miles in your account to search for Krisflyer award availability.
About availability for Velocity members - It’s rare to see business class award space on singapore airlines redeemable for Velocity members so I would say getting 2 seats are slim. If you are willing to do so, you can try redeeming one seat with Velocity and the other with Krisflyer.
You are right that etihad has much higher carrier surcharges which Velocity imposes. Apart from these two airlines, a way to get to Europe could be Virgin Atlantic. Although the booking and award flight searching process is quite a bit harder, it is possible to fly Virgin Atlantic from Hong Kong or Los Angeles to London and connect from/onwards to a Virgin Australia flight back to Australia.
Just an update on this one- Despite no awards availability on this flight showing up on Velocity i called up the call centre today and booked 2 business tickets with Singapore without needing to transfer to Krisflyer.
Key learning here is to always call if there doesn’t appear to be any availability as there is obviously a way they can find more seats! I’ll be using this one for future bookings.