Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles normally expire if unredeemed after 3 years, regardless of account activity. But it’s clearly unfair to expire people’s miles during a pandemic when they can’t travel, so Singapore Airlines has been progressively extending the validity of KrisFlyer miles that would have expired since April 2020.

Each extension is for six months at a time. Singapore Airlines will continue to extend the validity of expiring KrisFlyer miles until at least the end of 2022.

Normally, if you have KrisFlyer miles due to expire at the end of a given month, there is an automatic process that immediately reinstates the miles to your KrisFlyer account after they have expired. No action should be required.

Unfortunately, there is a situation where this doesn’t work.

If you cancel an award flight booking made using KrisFlyer miles that would have been due to expire after you made the booking (but before you cancelled the booking), those miles won’t be automatically reinstated onto your KrisFlyer account. In fact, if you don’t take any action, you may lose the miles altogether.

Normally, this is exactly how the KrisFlyer program is supposed to work. You can redeem KrisFlyer miles to book travel up to a year into the future, even for travel dates after the miles would have expired. However, if you subsequently cancel your booking after the miles would have expired, you wouldn’t normally get the miles back.

As KrisFlyer is currently pausing the expiration of miles, you are now entitled to get the miles reinstated after cancelling an award booking. Unfortunately, this requires manual intervention. You will need to contact Singapore Airlines and with their call centre hold times currently very high, this could be easier said than done.

One AFF member explained:

The mechanics of the way SQ mileage extensions work (miles get extended only when due to expire), means those that are redeposited (after cancelling an award) after they were due to expire will still automatically expire (there’s no sweep to pick them up), thus manual intervention in the form of an appeal to reinstate is required.

You will have to appeal that the miles be reinstated, by either calling, emailing or submitting a form online requesting that the expiration of the miles be reversed, as they would have been extended to September anyway. (and In September they will be extended again to March 2023). I would go with the email or form first, and if you don’t hear back within 2-3 weeks, then call.
– dajop, 22 February 2022

Sadly, multiple Australian frequent flyers have come across this frustrating glitch.

This is a known issue with many people being affected. The miles shouldn’t have been expired. My experience was that it took multiple phone calls with several hours wasted before they eventually reinstated my miles.
– NoName, 22 February 2022

I lost a few hundred that expired when they shouldn’t have. To be honest I couldn’t be bothered contacting them given how bad the service has been of late. But clearly there is some issue where the extension isn’t being automatically applied.
– N860CR, 22 February 2022

If you’ve been affected by this glitch, you can get it resolved by contacting Singapore Airlines. In an ideal world this wouldn’t be necessary, and there must be lots of KrisFlyer members out there who’ve lost miles without realising, but at least there is a solution if you are prepared to put in the effort of contacting the airline.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Krisflyer miles expired

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.