Adding infant to redemption booking
 

I tried calling Krisflyer to add my son to a redemption booking as an infant, but the agent over the phone said redemption booking agents aren't available, is it just a matter of hang up and try again or there's a number I should be calling to make this change?

Unfortunately that seems to be their modus operandi now that more of the calls are routed to India and Phillipines (English), Malaysia (Malay) and China (Chinese). They'll pass the message to someone who can deal with redemptions and call back. Sometimes same day, oftentimes after a few days. Not a good experience overall.

Wow, SQ really went downhill. I remember calling them pre-Covid and things get resolved so quickly.

Thanks for the heads up, guess I will just have to keep chasing them until they can put me to the right team, the joy of points redemption!

Where are you located?
Not sure whether the mentioned „recent changes“ have been since April. If not I can recommend to call the Frankfurt Office (in Germany) of SQ. They helped me quite good on the same matter back in April.

They needed all details, forward then to another department and approx 3-4 days later I received a call from SQ agent who was asking for cc details and he finalized the booking then.
I have to note that there have been some issues later on since they put the redemption & the paid (infant) booking into one confirmation number but their system showed the redemption as not ticketed and started to send reminders to finalize the booking.
I had to call 2-3 times until it was solved and all tickets correctly sent by email to me.

I added an infant to a redemption booking earlier this month. It was on the English speaking line but I do not know which country's call centre unfortunately. I think I just got very lucky as they were able to add the infant on without too much trouble, and did not pass me on to a different department or call me back. I do not think I would have been speaking to a redemption agent as it was around 1pm UK time and so it would have been evening in Singapore, but it could have been I suppose. They took the CC payment details over the phone.

So maybe just trying at a different time of day and hopefully getting through to an agent who knows how to process it is the way to go.

Edit: I did not call a special number - just whatever number was on the website.

I recently had a Phillipines based agent call me back from live chat as I was adding a stopover to a redemption ticket so there were some taxes to pay. I asked her then to add the infants and she did so without any issue and calculated the fare (10%) that matched the fare that the website would have charged for an infant on a cash booking. Was quite surprised it was so easy!

She missed 1 seat assignment (787 and I do not want bassinet) so I called in today (India call centre I think) who proceeded to tell me that the seatmap wasn't available (despite my OH + infant on another ticket being seated already) and that SQ didn't do waitlists! So it does appear that it is very YMMV with who you get and what they can do

Just to add for anyone who is new to the topic:

When the accompanying parent travels on a redemption / award ticket, and they do not want to book a separate seat for the infant, the parent needs to buy a cash ticket for the infant that will be seated in their “lap”, i.e. travelling in the same seat as the adult. The price will be 10% of the cheapest available adult ticket in the same travelling class (I.E. economy, PE, business or first!) for the same sector. One cannot redeem such an in-lap infant ticket with award miles.

If you want your infant child to occupy a separate seat next to you, you can book this with miles. It will cost you the same as an adult award ticket.

As is common with most airlines unfortunately. Notable exceptions being BA, Aeroplan & Virgin Atlantic. Of course no good for SQ if you want to fly longhaul J as they do not release seats to partners

A couple of questions:

1) How does SQ price out the 10% infant fee for a flight that is sold out? I’m flying in the suites JFK-FRA in a few weeks. All of first class is sold out, so I’m curious how they will price out the infant fare. I’m trying to figure out approximately how much $ I’ll owe before I call them.

2) I have two one ways booked for me and my wife (JFK-FRA with a return one week later). When adding a lap child, Is there any way for them to calculate the fee based on a round trip fare? I ask because it looks like the RT fares are a lot less than two one ways, so could save a lot on the lap child fee this way

For anyone interested, I was able to answer my own questions after an hour long phone call.

They were still able to price it out no problem even with first class being sold out.

They couldn't price the lap child fee off a round trip fare. They had to do it as two separate one ways.

Price for both legs was a $2K total: $700 for JFK-FRA, and $1,300 for FRA-JFK. Supposedly this can be refunded less a $100 fee.

I managed to get return infant tickets booked in the past, although it was very complicated and took forever to achieve it. It also caused a LOT of confusion at check-in at various points, because we had actually booked stop-over trips for adults on separate tickets (Think AAA-BBB // BBB-CCC, then CCC-BBB // BBB-AAA), and then managed to book BBB-CCC-BBB for the infant. We managed t get on all flights, but boy did it take some time to explain to the check-in agents... :D

Still better than that one time when we were flying QR SIN-DOH-FRA on miles in C, with separate an infant-in-lap ticket that I had bought two months prior, at the airport in SIN, with a QR agent speaking over the phone to QR HQ in DOH, only when it came to check-in at Changi two months later, the agent there informed us after 45mins of trying to figure out what was going on, that the infant ticket had been issued in economy class... (How is that even possible?!). It took them almost two hours to sort it all out, and they held the plane for us, while SIN's QR staff tried to call DOH again to remedy the error they had made, and in the end the check-in staff informing the flight crew to hold the flight because "the pax had been held up at immigration (!)"... which obviously was total BS, the ground staff simply did not want to admit to the flight crew that they had f***ed up our ticket... :mad::rolleyes:

All in all, I can only say that I am very glad that my younger daughter turned two earlier this year. Finally I don't have to deal with all the ball-aches of trying to link infant tickets to adult award tickets, especially across different airlines in the same alliance!

If i want to book rewards tickets for two adults and a lap infant, i first use miles booking on their website then call to add the infant?

thx

yes. You book the redemption ticket for the adults. Call to add the infant ticket. Infant ticket cost 10% of adult fare in cash.

So infant tickets get 1 bag? I would've thought they get none.

Has anyone had success with redeeming miles for an infant (i.e under 2 years old) to have their own seat?

I am traveling with my 21 month old who is not realistically going to be held for 19 hours for EWR-SIN. I know that I can book a seat for a child over the age of 2 with miles online, but wasn't sure about using miles for an infant under the age of 2.