I am curious to know/find out the following - surely airlines earn a lot by selling miles to third parties (banks, creditcard, shops etc) and yearly many miles expire, because you forgot about them or you just can't find any award space. Then on top of that some people pay extra to extend the expiry date of the miles (so double income for the airlines). So, it is not that redeeming with miles is giving away free seats ...its been paid for, especially now with the higher redemption rate they will earn even more per mile sold

So in this regard SQ is just having this silence income stream by being extremely stingy in having award availability ....and earning all from the sold miles and not rewarding their customers by utilising the miles.