ramsfan

I am flying with SQ in B class economy SIN to SYD next March and wanted to use Aeroplan points to upgrade to business. I bought a B class ticket specifically so I could upgrade. I understand from the terms and conditions of star alliance upgrades that Singapore Airlines excludes A380 / B773ER / A345 aircraft, so my SYD / SIN flight cannot be upgraded; but I also get a message that I cannot upgrade the SIN / SYD flight ( "Upgrade not available for this flight". ) I am told by SQ call center that business class is wide open.

A supervisor at the SE call in said if I cannot do the upgrade online at Aeroplan they cannot do anything different and had no idea if SQ had allocated seats for Star Alliance upgrade and they were all used or they had not been allocated yet. He added the star alliance upgrades were not a great product as success was only about 20% in his experience responding to calls on this.

I have emailed SQ and asked why I cannot upgrade SQ211 March 23, and if they have not yet released seats.


Any help , ideas or experiences from the board would be welcome.

I upgraded YYZ to Addis with EA this way for January no problem. But if this is only doable 20% even when its 6 months out , its not good.

jarusoba

Well, it is not good.

*A upgrade is subject to I class inventory. That means if you could upgrade with points, you could have the reward ticket issued with points too.

So you paid big $ to buy a B fare for a chance to upgrade. Way worse value than paying big $ to buy an AC Flex fare for a chance to upgrade. In the latter, at least you have a decent chance being an SE. The chance of SQ releasing award seats in J for long haul is next to zero.

ramsfan

Thanks for the quick reply Jarusoba.

It was not really a big a premium for B (about $200 vs lower fare that still earned points) and at $1383 for SYD/ SIN / open jaw/ BKK/SIN/SYD I think that's a good price.

But if SQ do not release any J on long haul then it makes their participating in the star alliance upgrade program a joke.

If it is dependant on availability of I class inventory, does can anyone with ready access to tools to determine that tell me what I class inventory is for SQ 211 March 23.

Thanks

jarusoba

[KVS Availability Tool 7.3.0/Diamond - Awards/StarAlliance/JP-ANA-SP1]

tng11

SIN-SYD for the non-388 flights seems to have pretty good availability - just that you got unlucky on that date. Back in August I saw pretty consistent availability in April.



EDIT: SQ241 looks like it's available? I confirmed with the AP site it's bookable.

ramsfan

thanks for the input. good to know I may have been unlucky on my date and its doable other times as I will do this again in July.

On balance also I think I would rather go economy and leave at 9:40 on SQ211 then try to switch to SQ241 leaving at 7:05 even if I got to upgrade.

It will be a long time since I have had to fly economy on a long flight. I am sure it will be character building!!!

Will try to learn to use the KVS tool for next time.

tnkngn

I have exactly the same experience as you with trying to get a SAU on SQ operated flights.
Most of my travel to SEA, OZ and NZ I am booking on SQ Y&B fares, as it lets me change travel dates for zero dollars and costs a relatively low premium over a "Flexi saver" or even "Sweet deal" on the SQ website.
I think I have yet to not rebook my return flights, so booking Y/B fares has been working great for me.

On multiple occasions I have tried to upgrade one of these Y or B fares, no luck to date and I have pretty much given up on it.

I agree with your above statement, might as well not participate or claim to participate, if availability is never there.

sluis

There is no I award availability on that specific flight. If you change it to flight SQ 241 leaving SIN at 705AM your star alliance upgrade will clear immediately. I don't think there would be a change fee as it is the equivalent of a latitude fare.

mikeyyz

+1. J on SQ is definitely worth an extra 2 hours in SIN!

padregusmao

If you have any KF miles SQ231 at 0045 on Mar23 is also available for upgrade at the saver level (25K KF miles) and is an A380. The other advantage is you can upgrade from S and E in addition to Y,B.

ramsfan

in thinking about the statement in post 2 (*A upgrade is subject to I class inventory. That means if you could upgrade with points, you could have the reward ticket issued with points too.) I wondered if I could check upgrade availability by looking at what was available on AP for points for business class SYD-SIN return. Sure enough it shows March 23 SQ 241 is available in business for points which matches several posts above pointing that out presumably using KVS or similar tools.

Was this a fluke or is a reliable way of knowing when one can do a *A upgrade. I take it from post 2 its reliable. Thanks jarusoba for sparking the idea.

That could be very useful to me and others
, maybe thkngn for you.

So I think I will check on AP re points awards for business availability to see if and when business opens for SQ 211.

On this particular flight, despite the advice in posts 8 and 9, I still think I would rather fly economy at 9:40 than business at 7:05 as getting up before 5AM is not good -- at least for me!! So I will not be switching from SQ 211 to SQ 241.

ac777

Getting the upgrade on SQ is a very big problem. Usually "inventory not available" comes up. I book RTW's quite regularly in D ( Business) and have managed to get to F only once. ( not available in 388 ever--777 sometimes). The last one I tried had only 1 seat booked in the 77W and there was no inventory available.