smiles33

This is likely a very basic question so I'd appreciate your patience and any help. I bought 4 premium economy seats for my family to travel from SIN to SFO in Feb. 2020. The outbound flight from SFO to SIN is J class on United metal thanks to a friend's frequent flier miles. Given the VERY long flight, I am thinking now I want to upgrade our seats to J class on the return flight. We loved our J class experience on SQ to NRT last year (bought with a combination of Chase points cash on the Chase travel portal) and I'm worried we will be miserable on the 14.5 hour inbound flight. We just did an Air France flight in Premium Economy and none of us slept at all on the 10 hour flight.

We have no status on any airline and only fly long haul 1-2/year at most. We have Chase Sapphire Reserve points that I could transfer in to KF, but I don't want to be stuck with nearly 300K KF miles if it's unlikely our upgrade request is granted. I bought the ticket on Kayak through a third party, and neither the e-ticket or receipt (from Kayama) show the fare class so I'm assuming it could be up to the 73,000 miles/person to upgrade (Advantage rate for booking classes S and T). Are 4 upgrades from PE to J highly unlikely? Is there some other way to figure out what our fare class is?

Premium Economy is nearly sold out, but I was able to see that I could get 4 J class seats for cash ($8K each for a one way!). Yet I'm not ready to pay that much cash. Does SQ ever offer more reasonable cash upgrades to J class?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

RTWFF

Short answer - no. If you look at your booking via the SQ site it will show you the booking class (using the 6-character PNR as the reference)

sbs2716g

SQ J class to SFO is alway filled up. Very difficult to get upgrade for 4 paxes esp when they are selling at $8000 (which usually mean the highest fare class)

what is your date of travel so we can check the load

smiles33

Thank you both for your helpful replies. We are flying Saturday, 2/22/20. Do you have the premium Expert Flyer account then?

I won't be too optimistic. Instead, I'm keeping my fingers crossed SQ PE is far better than Air France's PE....

Thanks again!

sbs2716g

SQ32 - they are only selling the highest Business class fare (J class) so any chance of upgrade is pretty low

SQ2 - still selling the lowest business class fare but I guess you are on SQ32

PE seat should be ok. Can go YouTube n google some of the review.

onlySIA

It's not easy to sleep on SQ32 anyway since it's a morning departure. It is the shorter of the two journeys, and the Polaris lounge at SFO is superior to the SilverKris lounge at Changi in my opinion, so you have a better deal than doing PE and J the other way around. PE is not as good as J, obviously, but it won't be the end of the world. And you can use it as motivation for your kids to study hard so they get a well-paid job and can always fly in J

smiles33

sbs2716g: Yes, we are on SQ 32 as I wanted a direct flight. OK, we will prepare ourselves for PE. I'll go google some reviews.

onlySIA: very good advice and I agree, my kids are ridiculously lucky. I remember taking semi-annual trips to Asia with my immigrant parents in Economy and being absolutely miserable (despite being a kid and not my current 5'7" adult size!).

And yes, I also knew I wanted J class for the longer leg. I thought the SilverKris lounge at Changi would be incredible, so I'm actually glad to hear Polaris at SFO impressed you so much. I was quite pleased with the Polaris Lounge at LAX (which was 10 times better than the *A Lounge with its lackluster food and limited seating due to the hordes of passengers everywhere).

Thanks again!