SQ Tips, Trips and Tales

[BCons]

Yes as daft009 stated, you can book with an expired passport.


I made my current Award booking back in July with an expired passport and as I do not fly till June this year, with no earlier international trips, I am not going to renew it for a few more months yet.

Dont delay tooo long - hv seen complaints elsewhere about ppl getting nervous about the time its been taking for new pp's to be issued. And you're saving what ? a few months in a 10 yr pp?

 

[Scr77]

Dont delay tooo long - hv seen complaints elsewhere about ppl getting nervous about the time its been taking for new pp's to be issued. And you're saving what ? a few months in a 10 yr pp?

Renewed my expired passport 2 weeks ago. Walked into a post office on a Friday afternoon and new passport was in my letterbox the following Friday morning.

 

[get me outta here]

Looking at assisting a mate with info on reward booking at the end of the calendar 2023, and it didn’t recognise SYD or Sydney. What’s going on?

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Dont delay tooo long - hv seen complaints elsewhere about ppl getting nervous about the time its been taking for new pp's to be issued.

Not what I have heard for renewals. But yes I will allow a buffer.

And you're saving what ? a few months in a 10 yr pp?

I have already saved over 12 months.


Have a look at Passport renewal I qualify for the streamlined process.

 

[Jacques Vert]

Looking at assisting a mate with info on reward booking at the end of the calendar 2023, and it didn’t recognise SYD or Sydney. What’s going on?

I've seen that occasionally; log out and log back in, change browsers, etc.

 

[Matt_01]

Question in regards to waitlisting how does the SQ process work is it similar to QF upgrade (I am pretty au fait with QF) so in the SQ world is it Solitaire, PPS, *G etc. I had booked x2 J redemptions on the redeye out of MEL for Mrs&MissM, we changed our plans, changed the flights and then changed again. When rebooking the redeye out of MEL was no longer available (Saver) so now they are on the redeye in J out of BNE. I have now noticed that both Saver and Advantage are now only available as waitlist, just wondering when both fare types are waitlisted what are the chances of clearing. I am weighing up if I get on a call to SQ and request a waitlist for the MEL flight, they are not members of KF and am not sure if their waitlist would be processed based on my SQ status (SG) similar to the way QF treats their upgrades when I request it, i.e they are managed the same as any other P1 request. There is also part of me that is thinking just throw your hat in the ring, they already have flights but as they are starting from ADL the connections at MEL would be easier.

 

[Peasant]

Good question @Matt_01. SQ changed the waitlist system in 2019 for all members and this has thrown its fair share of curve balls since. In theory, SQ is only making Saver waitlists available on flights they think there is a reasonable chance will clear. In the past you could waitlist all the way up until departure, but all waitlists that do not clear at 14 days prior to departure will now be automatically cancelled. In my experience, they do not reappear within this 14 day window. it's also worth noting that inventory is now much more tightly controlled than in the past, so once the allocation of Saver and Advantage seats for a flight is allocated, they are unwilling to expand availability, even on flights that are far from full, which may explain why both Saver and Advantage are waitlisted simultaneously. Strange...but SQ often moves in mysterious ways.

Generally speaking, waitlists should clear according to status, but I don't have any anecdotal evidence to prove that this does/does not work. That said, my advice would be to call and ask the reservation agent to send a chaser to the load controller. I've had reasonable success using this tactic over the years, and I understand it is available to all passengers regardless of status. The catch is that unlike QF, this is done offline once you finish the call and if the request is unsuccessful, you will not receive any communication that your request hasn't been successful.

 

[SOPOOR]

Good question @Matt_01. SQ changed the waitlist system in 2019 for all members and this has thrown its fair share of curve balls since. In theory, SQ is only making Saver waitlists available on flights they think there is a reasonable chance will clear. In the past you could waitlist all the way up until departure, but all waitlists that do not clear at 14 days prior to departure will now be automatically cancelled. In my experience, they do not reappear within this 14 day window. it's also worth noting that inventory is now much more tightly controlled than in the past, so once the allocation of Saver and Advantage seats for a flight is allocated, they are unwilling to expand availability, even on flights that are far from full, which may explain why both Saver and Advantage are waitlisted simultaneously. Strange...but SQ often moves in mysterious ways.

Generally speaking, waitlists should clear according to status, but I don't have any anecdotal evidence to prove that this does/does not work. That said, my advice would be to call and ask the reservation agent to send a chaser to the load controller. I've had reasonable success using this tactic over the years, and I understand it is available to all passengers regardless of status. The catch is that unlike QF, this is done offline once you finish the call and if the request is unsuccessful, you will not receive any communication that your request hasn't been successful.

Maybe I'm not the target market for waitlists, but 14 days prior to travel would be impossible from planning hotels, holidays, leave etc especially for most families. That waitlists would only work for me if I already had a J booked and was waiting for a F booking on the same flight type situation

 

[tororm]

Bit of a story about my last experience booking SQ award seats. My wife and I had 124k points each in our individual KF accounts and wanted SIN - anywhere in europe in F Dec 22 - points redemption with a cash topup.

Found SIN - FRA on multiple dates with apparent bookings available for 2 pax. However, everytime I took one seat, any further immediately went to waitlist (saver fare). This did not make sense.

Decided to call:

Day 1 - 4 hour wait. Agent agreed that there was some kind of system issue and promised escalation callback by 11am Singapore time the following day

Day 2 - No call by 6pm Singapore time. Wait on hold for 5 hours. Give up

Day 3- Call back at 2pm AEST / 11am SIN. Remain on hold for a little over 10 hours. Agent answers and we begin two further hours of back and forth and placing me on hold:

I wont go into tremendous detail about what was said, but at various points I was told any availability showing whatsoever was a mistake, that I could not make a booking for 2pax at once and that I could not pay when booking to topup the 1k missing points.

At 12 hours I was disconnected- seems like Telstra has a maximum call time. It was 2am local time and I was wrecked.

20 minutes later I get a call back. Agent had thought it through and managed to do the booking on two PRNs. I jumped into our QF accounts and paid the taxes- all confirmed.


TLDR - no matter what they say you can book two award seats separately but at the same time as not to trigger waitlisting, just be prepared to be on the phone for 21 hours.

 

[Peasant]

Sounds diabolical @tororm. I’d strongly suggest you write to Customer Affairs. While they may not do anything for you, they should investigate the root cause of these issues. SQ needs to do better.

 

[Matt_01]

@Peasant thanks for the info and what is a chaser is this just an email or an SQ term. Although you do not get confirmation am I correct in assuming that this can easily be worked out by looking at the booking as it would still be in a waitlist status or the waitlist just vanishes and the original booking remains as confirmed. I was aware that SQ did change the waitlist rules a few years back and I would suggest that my way of thinking is similar to what @SOPOOR has posted. For family trips these are planned and booked around school holidays around a year in advance and I normally make bookings on the day seats are released be it OW or *A. When booking reward seats I work on the assumption I am competing for the handful of seats that the airlines make available with every other person (worldwide) that may also be looking for them. I will most likely call SQ and request a waitlist for the MEL-SIN redeye and if it does not clear MrsM will just have to collect luggage, get on the transfer bus, train or taxi to BNE international, they will will still be in J from BNE.

 

[tororm]

Sounds diabolical @tororm. I’d strongly suggest you write to Customer Affairs. While they may not do anything for you, they should investigate the root cause of these issues. SQ needs to do better.

It was a painful few days, the end result was good. When you say Customer Affairs @Peasant Do you mean Consumer Affairs the government body or some department of SQ I'm unaware of?

 

[Peasant]

@Matt_01 a chaser in SQ parlance is a request from reservations to the load controller (revenue management) for an assessment of your waitlist. All going well, this will result in confirmation of your waitlist, and you receive an email saying your flight is available for confirmation. If the request is unsuccessful, the waitlist will still remain, up until 14 days prior to departure, it won’t result in cancellation.

One of the tricky bits post 2019 is that agents can no longer generate a new waitlist request as they used to be able to do. If the waitlist is not available online, an agent cannot just add you to it….they really mean the waitlist is closed.

Post automatically merged: Feb 7, 2022

It was a painful few days, the end result was good. When you say Customer Affairs @Peasant Do you mean Consumer Affairs the government body or some department of SQ I'm unaware of?

I’d write to [email protected] as your first step.

 

[Matt_01]

Sounds diabolical @tororm. I’d strongly suggest you write to Customer Affairs. While they may not do anything for you, they should investigate the root cause of these issues. SQ needs to do better.

What could/ would Consumer Affairs, assuming you are referring to AU. I am not in the legal field rather than just a humble IT type, most booking engines be it for airline, hotels, car rentals etc. are globally run beasts that use vanity URLs and skinned websites to look like you are booking from a country specific site.

 

[Peasant]

Just to clarify, internally within SQ, Customer Affairs is the department that handles all customer complaints and conducts root cause investigations into these issues. Traditionally it’s been quite a powerful department within the airline, but I’m not sure quite what the state of it is post-Covid. Nevertheless, I think your experience warrants further investigation and I hope you get an apology at the very least for your troubles, @tororm.

 

[tororm]

Thanks @Peasant : the only hesitation I have is that I do not want to put the flights I now have at risk!

 

[Matt_01]

My apologies @Peasant I misread your post and confused it with the response from @tororm 'Customer' and 'Consumer' I did say I was a humble IT type

 

[tizey]

Apologies for asking this in case it has been asked before, but does an infant (<2yrs) flying with an adult on a redemption ticket require a redemption nominee slot on a award flight? I know infants are 10% of the full ticket on award flights, but do they need a redemption nominee slot?

Similarly, can an infant be added to only one-way of a return revenue fare for an adult?

I'm trying to organise flights for family members who are relocating back to Australia next year from Switzerland - 2 adults, 1 child (5yo) and 1 infant (18months at time of flying).

They will all be flying together, and brother in law will be going back for 2months and then flying back to Australia once his work is wrapped up. I only have enough miles to do a one-way ticket for the 2 adults and child - so there will be a revenue fare in there too.

Thinking the best (cheapest) way to do it would be:

• Book Adult 1 & Child on one-way award flights - ZRH-SIN-MEL.
• Book Adult 2 and Infant on a revenue return flight - ZRH-SIN-MEL (same flight as above), returning MEL-SIN-ZRH. Infant only on the outbound flight from ZRH-MEL.
• Book Adult 2 on a one-way award flight ZRH-SIN-MEL

All flying in Y.

That way we avoid the 10% revenue fare of the infant?

Alternatively, as it seems SQ ZRH-MEL Return is quite expensive, could put them all on award flights to Australia, then buy a revenue flight MEL-ZRH return, flying a cheaper option as SQ seems very exxy currently.

 

[MattA]

Apologies for asking this in case it has been asked before, but does an infant (<2yrs) flying with an adult on a redemption ticket require a redemption nominee slot on a award flight? I know infants are 10% of the full ticket on award flights, but do they need a redemption nominee slot?

Don't think so, no. The infant will just be on a standard revenue ticket. I had an award booking for a trip to Europe in 2020 involving an infant (which was ultimately cancelled for obvious reasons). I made the redemption booking first for the other three passengers and then just phoned up to book the infant. This was a separate booking with a different PNR to the award one. The only reason that you have to phone up to book this is that you obviously can't book a ticket for an unaccompanied infant online unless there's an adult travelling with them. (Hoping to finally take this trip later this year although no longer have to deal with infant booking challenges due to the child in question now being well over the age of 2...)

Thinking the best (cheapest) way to do it would be:

• Book Adult 1 & Child on one-way award flights - ZRH-SIN-MEL.
• Book Adult 2 and Infant on a revenue return flight - ZRH-SIN-MEL (same flight as above), returning MEL-SIN-ZRH. Infant only on the outbound flight from ZRH-MEL.
• Book Adult 2 on a one-way award flight ZRH-SIN-MEL

All flying in Y.

That way we avoid the 10% revenue fare of the infant?

The price of the infant ticket is going to be roughly the same regardless of whether it is bought as part of a revenue fare booking or added on to an award ticket. It's still 10% regardless of how it is booked (you can see this for yourself during the booking process -- click through to a fare including an infant and then click "cost breakdown by passengers" at the top; you can see the infant is charged at 10% of the adult fare minus the taxes).

 

[RAM]

Sounds diabolical @tororm. I’d strongly suggest you write to Customer Affairs. While they may not do anything for you, they should investigate the root cause of these issues. SQ needs to do better.

Yes this was back in July 2016 but serves a a datapoint.

I booked two saver awards for 1st from Paris to Sydney at the same time on the one Krisflyer Account. Just in case I entered the details for the other passenger first.

Worked perfectly.