I’ve had a very disappointing experience with Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program. The biggest issue is the extremely short mileage expiry policy — your hard-earned miles can expire before you even get a chance to use them.
The redemption process is frustrating. It’s almost impossible to secure an award booking unless you’re extremely lucky. The typical trap is the waitlist system: you transfer your points (in my case, from Westpac) to book a flight, only to be placed on a waitlist that rarely clears. Meanwhile, your miles continue ticking toward expiration.
As a result, I now face losing valuable Westpac points and KrisFlyer miles, with no flight to show for it. It’s a deeply disappointing system that feels intentionally stacked against the user. If anyone had simila experience , were you able to revert the transfer bak to westpac altitude ?
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had a negative experience with KrisFlyer. Some thoughts.
Every Frequent Flyer programme on the planet has its strengths and weaknesses — in that sense, you could look at the weakness of every FF programme and call it a “deathtrap” if you want. No long-haul flights available using Qantas points? Qantas FF is a “deathtrap”. Virgin Australia is not part of a global airline alliance? Velocity points are a “deathtrap”. Emirates charges massive carrier fees? Skywards is a “deathtrap”. KrisFlyer points expire after three years? KrisFlyer is a “deathtrap”. You see my point.
Once you transfer points into KrisFlyer, you have three years to book a flight. If you book that flight a year in advance, you have almost four years from the date of the initial transfer to fly. I question your description of the mileage expiry policy as “extremely short”.
“It is almost impossible to secure an award booking”. My experience is different but what I would say is that if that’s your experience with KrisFlyer, it’ll be your experience with every other FF programme on the planet. In my experience it’s easier finding availability via KrisFlyer than any other programme I regularly use. That doesn’t make it easy — just easier!
You could describe the points expiry system as “deliberately stacked against the user”. On the other hand as a user I quite like it because it means that there are fewer KrisFlyer points out there, which makes it easier to secure reward seats for those people who do have points! Again, name a FF programme and if you look hard enough you’ll find something about it that you could interpret to mean that it’s “intentionally stacked against the user”.
Yes, it’s a quirk of the Waitlist system that you can’t waitlist a flight unless you have the points in your account. But if you don’t like the Waitlist system, don’t use it.
Once points are in KrisFlyer you have three years to use them. If you’re having difficulty redeeming an award seat, please let us know your specifics and we’ll do our best to help.
To answer your specific question: once your points are transferred into KrisFlyer you cannot transfer them back to Westpac Altitude. If you really can’t find an award and the points are just about to expire, you could transfer them to Velocity. You’ll lose a percentage of your points in the transfer, but at least you won’t lose everything.
And the bottom line is that if you dislike KrisFlyer that much, vote with your feet and use another FF programme. Everyone has FF programmes that they prefer and don’t prefer, and that’s perfectly OK.
@djaafar it is unfortunate if you have miles expire because of the challenges but it reads to me like it was not the problem with the program but the lack of understanding of the program.
As sixtyeight has mentioned, if you have questions about the program or need help finding seats, please provide more specifics and perhaps the community can help.