There are programs where miles never expire, programs where miles never expire as long as you have some activity, and then programs where miles have a fixed expiry (use them or lose them).
Singapore Airlines belongs to the last group where miles expire after 36 months, except that you can pay to extend them to 6 months (non-elite members) or 12 months (elite members).
You can access Singapore Airlines here.
There was a promotion during the pandemic from Singapore Airlines that allowed you to earn elite status and bonus miles for conversions from select partners, and I took advantage of this offer:
UPDATE: Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Conversion Bonus + Elite Qualifying Miles
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Conversion Bonus Success + Elite Qualifying Miles
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer 12-15% Bonus For Credit Card Points Transfers Through November 22, 2021
Singapore KrisFlyer Miles Extension:
After converting the points, I have only done one award booking, and roughly 235K expire TODAY.
You can extend the mile for a fee of $12 for every 10K extended.
There is also an option to pay the extension using the expiring miles.
I decided to use a credit card instead and pay S$386.78.
Waiting for the payment confirmation
And FAILURE. It seems that Singapore Airlines doesn’t like cards that don’t use the authorization part. Good luck waiting for someone from Singapopre Airlines to contact you….
I decided to use another card and got the Mastercard payment confirmation screen.
Payment confirmation.
Also, an email confirmation from SQ.
The email also included a PDF receipt with the EMD number (essentially a ticket starting with 618).
Conclusion
When we write about these conversion offers, I always stress that you should NOT CONVERT unless you have a clear plan to use them, and I totally failed here.
I also have a problem because the program from which these miles were mostly coming has a hard expiry, so I need to do something with them.
Singapore Airlines is lovely in the air, but you should stay away from KrisFlyer unless you are based in the city-state. The program is mostly awful, and the ability to book partner awards on their website is close to non-existent. You should never even consider crediting a partner fight there, and I haven’t even credited a Singapore Airlines flight to KrisFlyer.
Plus, when you can book those partner awards, the fees are insane, and the mileage requirements are usually significantly higher than if you use other Star Alliance programs.
I was eyeing one itinerary for travel in February that would have been good value using KrisFlyer miles, but there was a chance that I would need to cancel it, and obviously, these miles would have been forfeited in that case.
In retrospect, I should have probably just used miles to extend these miles rather than paying the fee.
Do you find any value in the KrisFlyer program and KrisFlyer miles in general?
Terms and Conditions of these KrisFlyer miles extensions:
- Only miles expiring in the current month and the next 5 can be extended.
- Miles may only be extended once.
- For KrisFlyer members, miles can only be extended by 6 months. For Elite and PPS Club members, miles can be extended by 1 year.
- Miles that have already expired cannot be extended.
- The service fee for extending KrisFlyer miles online is 1,200 miles or USD 12 per 10,000 block of miles extended or part thereof.
