swindoro

I have a Capital One Venture X credit card and have more than enough miles to upgrade SQ Premium Economy Standard to Business. This is the first time I have ever used miles to upgrade of buy fares with an airline. Naively, I thought I could simply buy the Premium Economy tickets (yes, the one that is eligible for upgrade) and then ask for the upgrade with my miles.
Disappointingly, I was told there is no availability in business class for my route SIN - SFO even though there are plenty of seats available when checking SQ website. I understand that they want to maximize revenue and may release some spaces later on for upgrades/miles when there are unsold seats. Since I am a newbie here, what are the typical release time before departure date (if ever) for me to check to see if I can get to upgrade? Or is it a losing proposition that once they say no availability that means that it will never be available? Thanks in advance.

dkc192

Welcome to Flyertalk! There is no rhyme or reason when upgrades will be released, in either the saver or advantage category (the latter requiring more miles as a tradeoff for supposedly better availability). You can always waitlist, but note that you need the miles in your Krisflyer account to do so, and if the waitlist doesn't ultimately clear you won't be able to transfer the miles back to Capital One.

onlySIA

Yes, unfortunately upgrade space is not guaranteed. The safest route is to check for availability of award tickets in the class you want to travel prior to booking a lower class, but that doesn't perfectly guarantee upgrade availability either. There is no way I know of to tell upgrade availability with 100% reliability prior to booking. And SQ will let the plane fly with empty seats in Business even if people want to upgrade, because otherwise more people would buy PE hoping for an upgrade, whereas SQ wants you to buy Business outright.

swindoro

Thanks for the reply. That's discouraging. What's the point of accumulating points (no pun intended) when they can barely be used for their intended marketing purpose? Those miles are intended to maintain customer loyalty. It's difficult and expensive to accumulate those miles to be usable, including buying many SQ tickets to get there. Are all airlines like this or SQ is trickier than others?

bent

How to check for upgrade availability? Check for regular redemption availability. If there is Saver or Advantage seats available for pure miles redemption, it means there is a high chance upgrade availability is there because they supposedly book into the same class - I and D respectively.

You can choose to waitlist for upgrade, but this can only be done offline (call or live chat) - be sure to emphasise you want to waitlist for an upgrade award and not a redemption booking award because they would otherwise tell you they can't do waitlist for you - but that is only true for redemption booking waitlist. Their website does not support upgrade waitlist so the agent should be able to do it for you.

onlySIA

With Qantas international flights you don't find out if your request to upgrade was successful until some time after you submit a request. In the past one of my friends has only found out on the day of the flight that he managed to upgrade. I prefer to know as early as possible.
As you discovered, upgrading is less reliable especially if you have already set your travel dates into stone (@bent and I both shared the way to test whether upgrade availability is likely before you book). Outright redemptions you really have to be flexible about dates and even destinations (LAX vs SFO, MEL vs ADL etc.) to maximise your success. The newly announced Singapore to London Gatwick route had 974 J class Saver award tickets for the first five months, with many days having at least six J seats available for redemption at Saver rate.

SMK77

SQ is one of the more generous airlines when it comes to award seats and upgrades. They also limit their premium seats only to Krisflyer members.

Note that SQ opens up more seats to passenger actually spending money on SQ as this is indeed a loyalty program to look after frequent flyers (and not after people transferring credit card points).

frequent-traveller

I know SQ always had a good availibility to their own Frequentflyers and once I really needed to have one additional ticket since I got only 2Award tickets in Business via Lufthansa MilesandMore.
Therefore i had to transfer points from certain hotel programs just to get the additional Award booked

But I also have to admit, I either was lucky or not. But most of the times I was able to get Awards in Business class via Lufthansa Miles and More for SQ flights for 2-3persons.
On the other hand, i always book at least 7-8month in advance maybe thats why i always was able to catch some seats.
Recent booking for August from Muc-Sin with our preferred Dates.
For the 3rd. Person i had to pay for the ticket, since these were the only 2 available seats that time.

swindoro

Unfortunately, I have contacted their live chat agents 3 times and they said that they are not allowed to put passengers on waitlist for upgrade. Perhaps a change in policy?

sbs2716g

most likely the waitlist is closed. If there is no normal saver redemption waitlist, then upgrade waitlist will not be available.

swindoro

There are still normal redemption waitlist available. I checked them before contacting their agent. Quote from the agent: "we are not allowed to put passengers on waitlist, you will have to do it yourself."
Unfortunately, Singapore Airlines Manage Flight site no longer has the option for upgrade with miles. It says to contact Customer Service agent. It's practically saying that miles can no longer be used for upgrades.

bent

have you partially flown a leg on the itinerary? If so my experience is for partially flowed segment, you will need to call in for manual assistance. And if there is redemption seat available for a fresh redemption booking on the same flight / date, there should be no issue in them helping you with the upgrade offfline. Of course subject to your booking class being eligible for upgrade. Try to HUCA until u get a competent agent.

swindoro

Thank for the reply.

None of the legs has been used. It's for tickets starting in 4 months. Redemption award waiting list is available for the same flights and dates on their website. I paid extra for ticket class that can be upgradable. I've contacted them 3 times with 3 separate agents hoping one of them would give me a different answer but they all refused to assist, quoting that they were not allowed to upgrade customers to waitlist, it's company's policy.

swindoro

Just to add to this. I contacted their customer representative for the fourth time and here is the answer:
"Please be advise that we won’t be able to add waitlist to an existing booking. For waitlist redemption ticket, it’s only available for new booking. It’s not a new policy (because I asked). There’s really no way for us to add waitlist to an existing booking."

So yeah, SQ won't allow miles upgrade placed to waitlist. I won't pursue this further.