Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program offers an excellent value Star Alliance Round The World (RTW) Award – at least, in theory. For just 280,000 KrisFlyer miles in Business Class, plus taxes, you could fly around the world on Star Alliance airlines with up to seven stopovers!
It would already cost 273,000 KrisFlyer miles, for example, for a round-trip Singapore Airlines Business Class ticket from Melbourne to San Francisco. As it only costs slightly more KrisFlyer miles for a round-the-world ticket, the value is obvious. It’s also relatively easy to earn KrisFlyer miles through Australian credit cards. So the Star Alliance Round The World Award has been quite popular with Aussies.
Unfortunately, there are some downsides to trying to book a Star Alliance RTW Award with KrisFlyer miles. One is that you can’t change the ticket at all after you’ve taken the first flight.
But the biggest disadvantage is how difficult it is to successfully book one of these tickets. It’s not impossible, and it’s worth the effort, but it requires a bit of work.
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You can only book KrisFlyer RTW awards over the phone
Redeeming KrisFlyer miles for one-way and round-trip award tickets on Singapore Airlines is fairly easy. You can book most flights on the Singapore Airlines website.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case if you want to book a round-the-world trip (or certain types of partner airline awards). The only way to book a round-the-world award with KrisFlyer miles is to call Singapore Airlines.
Since 1 March 2023, Singapore Airlines also charges a USD250 service fee to book a round-the-world award ticket. That’s in addition to the taxes and carrier charges payable.
Not all call centre agents are familiar with the award rules
With Singapore Airlines charging a USD250 booking fee – that’s ~AU$387 at the current exchange rate – you would hope that most or all of the airline’s call centre staff were well-trained in booking these tickets. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The Australian Frequent Flyer forum has a long-running discussion thread about KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW Award bookings. Over the past year or so, there has been a consistent pattern of posts from people struggling to book these awards.
Unfortunately, it appears that some of the call centre staff either don’t understand the routing rules or are routinely misinterpreting them.
The Star Alliance Round the World Awards conditions are laid out in section J-3 of the KrisFlyer program terms and conditions. The rules are as follows:
Additional conditions for Star Alliance Round the World Awards
a. Normal Star Alliance Award travel restrictions apply.
b. You must travel in a continuous eastbound or westbound direction, beginning and ending in the same country. You must make only one crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and only one crossing of the Pacific Ocean. You are allowed an origin open-jaw in the same country.
c. Your total travel distance must not exceed 35,000 miles. You are allowed a maximum of 16 segments in your itinerary.
d. You may include a maximum of seven complimentary stopovers in your itinerary. The same stopover restrictions for Star Alliance Awards apply for Round The World Awards. In addition, you may stopover only once in each city and no more than twice in any one country. You may not purchase additional stopovers. Surface sectors are permitted but count as stopovers.
You can read more about this award in our KrisFlyer Star Alliance Round The World Award guide.
Some of the key issues that AFF members have experienced include:
- Being told their itinerary is not allowed because it contains backtracking, even when this isn’t the case
- Being told they cannot transit through the same city more than once
- Being told there is no award availability, even when multiple sources show availability
- Being unable to get the call transferred to an agent with more experience in round-the-world awards
This AFF post sums up many of the problems people have experienced recently.
Backtracking
In theory, the same backtracking rules that apply to paid Star Alliance round-the-world airfares should also apply to KrisFlyer’s Star Alliance RTW Award. These restrictions are outlined above – namely, that you need to travel in a continuous east or west direction, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans once each.
This rule is intended to stop you bouncing around between continents. It’s not intended to literally mean that you can never fly east on a westbound round-the-world itinerary. For example, if you need to get from Paris to Los Angeles on one of the legs of a westbound itinerary, you can fly via Frankfurt – even though that technically means flying east for a short time.
In fact, you can pretty much do whatever you like within each continent, as long as you follow all the other routing rules. But some call centre staff have misinterpreted the backtracking rule as meaning you can never fly west on an eastbound itinerary, or vice versa. Enforcing such a rule is impractical and would make many legitimate itineraries impossible.
Stopovers & transits
Some AFF members have been told they can’t transit through the same city more than once.
Although you can only stopover for more than 24 hours once in any given city, you are allowed up to two additional transits per city. A transit refers to a gap between flights of 24 hours or less.
Award availability discrepancies
Although you can only book over the phone, it’s a good idea to search for award availability before calling. This should save you a lot of time, as award availability is limited.
To search for Star Alliance award availability, you could use the Singapore Airlines website. Opt to “Show flights for Star Alliance” on the results page.
However, the Singapore Airlines website does not display award availability for all Star Alliance airlines. It also doesn’t always handle itineraries with connections well. Alternatively, you could use the United or Air Canada websites to check for Star Alliance award availability.
Unfortunately, even after finding award availability on suitable flights, some AFF members say the call centre told them the seats weren’t available.
This could happen for many reasons, and may not actually be an issue with Singapore Airlines. For example, it could be due to “phantom” award availability showing on other websites. Something else like married segments or “point of origin” restrictions could even be at play. Either way, this has been a cause of frustration as there is no way to verify availability without calling.
Call centre staff training
Ultimately, a lot of these problems could be resolved if more of the Singapore Airlines call centre staff were fully trained in round-the-world award bookings. Perhaps Singapore Airlines could re-invest some of those USD250 booking fees towards this. 😉
It would also be helpful if agents who aren’t familiar with these awards would be more willing to transfer the call.
One call centre agent even told an AFF member that they couldn’t include any Economy sectors on a Business Class ticket (where Business wasn’t available). This is not correct.
If you reach an inexperienced agent, there’s not much you can do other than hang up and call again.
What does Singapore Airlines say?
Australian Frequent Flyer invited Singapore Airlines to comment on the difficulties that KrisFlyer members have experienced when trying to book round-the-world awards.
A Singapore Airlines spokesperson told us that it will continue to provide training and support to its contact centre staff.
“Round the world award bookings require a significant amount of manual booking intervention to complete, with availability limited and determined by partner airlines and specific terms and conditions in place, which need to be checked against for each leg of the proposed itinerary to ensure compliance,” the Singapore Airlines spokesperson said.
“We are committed to providing ongoing support to our contact centre team to ensure that they can handle such queries appropriately.
“Singapore Airlines apologises to customers for any inconvenience caused when trying to make an around the world award booking and would like to assure them that our teams will work to process their bookings as quickly as possible within the terms and conditions for such bookings.”
Have patience and you’ll succeed
The silver lining is that many AFF members have been able to successfully book a Star Alliance Round The World Award using KrisFlyer miles.
Many say they found the process difficult and time-consuming. But with some perseverance, and some assistance from the AFF forum, they were able to lock in flights. So there is hope after all. And if you do manage to book one of these awards, they represent outstanding value for your KrisFlyer miles!
If you’d like assistance to use your KrisFlyer miles, the Australian Frequent Flyer Concierge service may also be able to help.
