Originally Posted by kkua
Nope. It's all printed on 012 tickets (none of it belongs to 618). I did check on splitting the ticket to 2 roundtrips (and even 1 r/t with 2 o/w); however, the price difference would be more than US$500. For reference, the fare routings are open jaws of NYC-SGN & HAN-NYC. NYC-SGN was low season, originally booked as MLXAB7 (USD1708 / 2). It's halfway in progress and halted in SIN after completing all NW segments. The SIN-SGN on SQ has yet to be taken. HAN-NYC was in high season, QHXAB7 (USD1452 / 2) but is ticketed on cheap Q-class. Routing goes through SIN on both directions and is booked in M outbound and Q on the return. Fares to SIN are much higher if I wanted to stay more than 30 days.
Is there a higher authority to seek help in recovering a potential loss?
It does not matter whose ticket stock was used, what is important is the Fare Calculation. It appears you have paid a "through fare" all the way to Saigon, which happened to allow a free stopover in Singapore on the way there. Neverless, because it is a through fare and you have already used a portion of it, there is no way to go back and revalue the outbound trip once you have departed.
On the other hand, if these were point to point fares, NYC-SIN and SIN-SGN then you might have some ability to downgrade the SIN-SGN portion to a lower fare, anytime prior to your departure from SIN. However advance purchase rules may restrict that option, or make it impossible.
As you are probably aware, airlines tend to release seats in lower fare classes as the departure date nears, so having a waitlisted segment clear at a lower fare class is not unusual. However, having it clear in time to take advantage of that fact is usually a rarity. By the time it does clear, you normally no longer meet the advance purchase requirement to qualify for the lower fare!
Another analogy of this same thought would be: suppose all K class fares require a 21-day advance purchase, and from 60 up until 21 days prior to departure, there are NO K seats available. But suddenly, at 20 days prior to departure, there are tons of K seats dumped back in to the availability. They may be there, but no one can buy a seat at that fare level because they no longer qualify to meet the advance purchase requirement of the K fares! The only thing possible at this point is for someone holding a return ticket on a different day and flight in K class to then make a change in their return and rebook on to the hypothetical flight we are looking at. That person would be allowed to make the change by paying ONLY the penalty, and no additional fare would be collected. Any other newcomers would be forced to purchase at some fare level higher than K, once inside of the 21 day point.
Hopefully, all of this makes sense to you. But even if it does not, you have no "potential loss" to worry about. It would a waste of time, IMHO, to even try to get some money back in this particular situation. Since you used the word "appeal" I assume you asked once and were told, correctly, that "NO" is the answer.