Shareholder

That sucking sound is the redemption of thousands of F award seats from SQ's KrisFlyer inventory taken by Mileage Plus and Aeroplan members. Not only that, but no fuel surcharge was applied to any of these awards. (F/O on all flights except A380s, including 777Ws...and J/I on A380s.) Obviously something happened this weekend as SQ migrated/combined its res systems that opened up premium award redemptions to the STARNet system.

I see the moderator has shut down a previous thread, but I am suggesting this does impact KrisFlyer members and their ability to access premium awards given the run on inventory over this past weekend through redemptions by members of other STAR FF programs. I would like to see some informed discussion as to how this might have actually occurred and won't get it on the UA/Mileage Plus or AC/Aeroplan fora.

So I ask anyone on this forum to posit or speculate on what happened this weekend?

Jasper2009

I´m not that sure the impact is as high as one may expect.

Just doing some simplified calculations:

1. there are some 100 longhaul flights per day with a C and F cabin, taking into account that some routes don´t have F (or only R) and some routes are less popular, let´s decrease this number to 50
2. assume there are usually >2 F award seats and >6 C award seats on each flight (not unrealistic IME based on watching SQ Krisflyer award availability, on many flights availability is much better)
3. awards could be booked for 360 days in the future

That would give us a total of 144000 C/F awards seats usually being available to Krisflyer members during the next year.

I´d be suprised if the FT community had been able to book more than a few thousand C/F award flights. Let´s say 5000 award flight segments were booked (and that´s quite a substantial number, my assumption would be the real number is lower), that´s ~3$ of the inventory.

Therefore I don´t think there should be a huge impact except maybe for the most popular routes like SFO-SIN in F.

BAmemberUSD2009

But that exactly is the problem - not all routes are equally popular, and the ones that have been redeemed in bulk by non KF members are the ones that were blocked originally (e.g. F/C on 777ER, A345, and A380). So the numbers are actually a lot worse than your estimates, and KF members have been royally screwed on all those routes.

For instance, most of the routes taken are the ones based in the US. Assuming there are approx 10 flights/day and 2F+6C seats normally available for redemption on each flight, we are looking at 80 seats or 28,800 seats total for the year. If non KF members redeemed 5,000-6,000, that's about 20% of the total availability.

However, even the calculation above is too generous because it assumes all 28,800 seats were available in the first place. As with most analysis, what matters most is contribution at the margin, and I'm guessing a lot of the 28,800 seats had already been redeemed by KF members (given the change in KF saver redemption policy recently) so a further 5,000-6,000 redemption by non KF members *really* eats into what was left.

Jasper2009

My "50 flights a day" estimate indeed only included routes which are operated by new equipment.

As far as I can tell, most FTers who redeemed miles used UA, AC and to a lesser degree US miles. All these programs allow creative routings such as NA-Europe-Asia or NA-Asia-Australia or even NA-Europe-Asia-Australia.
And I know many people took advantage of the option of having a comp. stopover in Europe etc.

While I like the idea of FT being able to screw up an airline´s inventory for an entire year, I honestly doubt the bookings made by FTer will have a significant effect on most routes.

SFO777

Perhaps if SQ hadn't dropped the FEZSQ RTW fare or at least modified (by price and supplement) to permit R, there wouldn't have been such a frenzy. It's not like they are giving it away completely like KE did a few months ago. In the end, it only lasted 36 hours and I tend to agree with Jasper2009 that two F seats on a few thousand flights over the next year it not that big a deal.
And if it spurs some new SQ flyers to buy SQ tickets down the road, it might even be a win-win for all parties.

787fan

I don't think FT'ers are the ones to blame, and neither is UA/AC. No one broke the rules or hacked the award reservation system at KF.

SQ have only themselves to blame for technological misstep and opening the floodgates to StarNet. UA/AC/US is simply reading what's available through StarNet, nothing more nothing less. Another part of SQ to blame is the normal stinginess of redemption availability in J/F, leading to extreme pent up demand. (if AirChina opened their floodgates tomorrow, you'd think ANYONE would care? )

And I'm personally thanking SQ for giving me 77W F on SIN-HKG (tried to book JFK-FRA A380 J too, but failed because it has shut down by then )

dparkinson

I just don't see why SQ can't go the LH route, which is shut it off for partners until 2 weeks (or T-48 for LX) and then open it up then. The reason so many people booked so many awards is they knew they were on the clock and this was a once in a multi-year opportunity. People redeemed 500,000 UA miles in a day just to take as many SQ flights as possible in order to maximize the time spent on the rare birds. If SQ had a more reasonable availability policy, that wouldn't have occurred.

787fan

I think SQ gave a whole new meaning to "Christmas in July"

JetAway

If SQ takes the low road and attempts to reject these weekend premium bookings (after severely limiting premium awards for *A partners for so long) then perhaps the big players in *A (UA, LH, etc.) should question the continued membership of SQ in *A. As it is, they seem to be enjoying all of the benefits of their membership while managing to avoid some key responsibilities.

787fan

Sadly, I don't think StarAlliance could afford losing SQ. They're the *A crown jewel on the Kangaroo Route (and in general).

One of the key reasons I like *A is the wide variety of premium reputation carriers that I could choose from for both revenue and reward tickets. Take the snobbish crown jewels away and the remainder would look like SkyTeam.

JetAway

But if members of partner programs have virtually no chance of securing premium awards on SQ what's the point? Is it all just for show?

SFO777

Seriously? Alliances were not created just so you can book award travel.

jk2

This is a very good point - if SQ is part of *A, don't they have any obligations to release their space to *A members? I don't remember any airlines, which don't release even C awards. Otherwise, catching SQ premium seats looks like a "catch a gold fish".

JetAway

Yes,"seriously." I was directly addressing the previous poster's point about choosing reward tickets. I'm well aware alliances have other business purposes.

FLYDCA

Correct but if SQ want to derive the other benefits of the Alliance SQ should also play a bit more fairly with the redemption obligation. Alliances should not be overly one sided and SQ is not the only guilty party in Star.