Booking SQ reward flights through Velocity

[travelislife]

When searching for SQ flights online with Velocity it only ever shows VA codeshare flight numbers, never actual SQ flight numbers.

A question...when calling should velocity be able to access seats shown as available as Saver seats on SQ's website?

 

[Lemon_Party]

SQ reportedly release far more inventory to their krisflyer program than partners.

Generally there's far better availability online KF vs VA, and I don't believe the call centre can access much more than what appears online.

 

[ninja-tim]

I just did a search today for J SIN-MEL on 2nd April and found a few SQ flights with SQ flight numbers.

Tried to Search J DPS-MEL but only VA flight, no SQ flights.

 

[travelislife]

I just did a search today for J SIN-MEL on 2nd April and found a few SQ flights with SQ flight numbers.

Tried to Search J DPS-MEL but only VA flight, no SQ flights.

Interesting. Maybe it depends on their route codeshare agreements? Any search I do for MEL-LHR all the SQ and EY flights are shown with VA flight numbers only, no SQ flight numbers. So much so, that on the phone just before to VA and when I quoted the SQ flight numbers of the flights I was looking at to the agent he said they didn't exist at all. I then told him the time of the flights and he quoted me the VA flight numbers, he didn't believe they weren't Virgin flights.

 

[travelislife]

I just did a search today for J SIN-MEL on 2nd April and found a few SQ flights with SQ flight numbers.

Tried to Search J DPS-MEL but only VA flight, no SQ flights.

Okay agent explained to me why it is. When it isn't available as a reward seat it shows only as the codeshares as it is like purchasing a fare. If the reward seat is available then it will be the SQ flight numbers.

 

[Pleb Status]

SQ reportedly release far more inventory to their krisflyer program than partners.

Generally there's far better availability online KF vs VA, and I don't believe the call centre can access much more than what appears online.

It is well known within the *A community that SQ restricts award availability to partner *A airlines. I assume similar restrictions also apply to VFF redemptions. I know from experience that UA J award availability is completely different to KF J availability on some routes.

If desperate, at least the VFF->KF conversion allows access to all available seats, at some additional 'cost'.

I do not necessarily have an issue with airlines keeping some award seats reserved for their own FF however...

 

[theblank]

For about one month last year, I was watching almost daily available rewards seats at VFF into ASIA from BNE, and also from SYD/MEL, as the actual flights I wanted to get were not available and I was hoping they would pop up. I constantly cross referenced SQ website to VA and there was not a single instance of reward seats on SQ that could not be booked on VA also.

I even did a matrix, so on a daily basis i could see if there were any changes.

the only difference was that on SQ we can waitlist.

 

[travelislife]

Ok, so I managed to get this booked! Sounds like there was some married segment logic going on in their system which meant the flights weren't being shown online.

MEL-SIN - available online
SIN-LHR - available online
MEL-SIN-LHR - not available online (but available on the SQ website, so wasn't a married segment issue there)

Anyway, on the phone to the agent she got the same result. But said yep I can book it as one ticket for you. Then the problems came.

She said the points total would be 157,000 per person, 65,000+92,000. I.e. it would be priced per segment. It then got interesting in that I said "no, it should be 139,000 as per your points tables". She then proceeded to tell me that they are always priced per segment and wouldn't budge. I said, you calculate the individual segment miles and add them together and then price them as per the zone table. It is only priced separately if there is a stopover.

She was adamant that no, this was never the case and the points tables were only for direct flights and it wasn't possible for London. I tried to get her to search their own website which shows 139,000 on available bookings and she wouldn't do it. So I asked to be transferred to a supervisor.

Whilst on hold she spoke with a colleague who corrected her, so she came back on the phone, apologised and said she would have to manually override the systems points calculations.

Anyway, at the end of the day it was all booked! Happy days! But it shows that you have to be persistent with this stuff, I was a mouse click away from transferring the points to SQ and costing myself more points and $500 in infant fees! So a good saving.