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Flying SilkAir Business Class- Phuket to Singapore

October 30, 2014 By Trevor Leave a Comment





This is a continuation of my round the world trip in August/September 2014. You can read the other sections of this trip report as follows: Flying the Emirates A380 in First, The Grand Hyatt Dubai, The Grand Hyatt Singapore, Flying the Emirates A380 in First for a second time, and The JW Khao Lak.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother writing anything about a short 90 minute regional flight, but I thought it was appropriate given the amazing experience my wife and I had.

Introduction

I burned more miles than I probably should have on this flight. I made the executive decision to fly business from Phuket to Singapore for two reasons. The first: we had been through Phuket International Airport 4 times previously, and they were a mixed bag. Having lounge access would be comfortable, and quiet. It did in turn become valuable, except for the lack of reliable charging power.

Power or (lack thereof) in Phuket Lounge.

Power or (lack thereof) in Phuket Lounge.

We happened to be going at a time that there were a lot of people traveling, but once we got to the lounge there weren’t more than 10 people there. Add in the free wi-fi (and we made some purchases for our FBA business too—admittedly risky), We were already getting value.

The flight

Completely unintentionally, we were the 4th and 3rd last to board. A couple was taking photos on the jetway that we rushed past, so, really we probably should’ve been the last to board. Ironically the captain noted “Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, because of your efficient boarding, we were able to leave early.” I’ll take that as a benefit, as the crew still made the time to offer us a pre-departure beverage.

Awesome Seat

Awesome Seat

 

Drink

Pre-departure Drink

Once in the air, and I really mean once, because I don’t think we were in the air for 10 minutes before we had our inflight meal, along with beverages. It was almost a game with drinking my wine, because I couldn’t seem to get below half a glass before either Sharon or Shafrina appeared with a bottle to refill my glass. The meal (below), wasn’t the best I’ve had, but it was in the upper half when considering it against regional and domestic US in flight meals.

Menu

Menu

 

Good Food

In-flight meal

We got to talking to Shafrina about the great service and the aircraft (a brand new 737-800 with the Sky Interior – which, by the way, fit our carry-ons beautifully).

Shafrina offered to let us fill out a comment card, which we happily obliged. When she came back, she brought a couple of decks of cards, and a puzzle. My nephews and niece will hopefully enjoy these.

Conclusion

While burning nearly twice the amount of KrisFlyer miles may not be the answer for many, for us, it was a nice splurge, an indulgence if you will. The business class cabin was only 4/12s full (ironically, all 4 of us were in row 2). Was the food and service worth paying 2x the points, I’m not sure, but I can tell you that my wife was happier, and in my experience, a happy wife leads to a happy life. Finally, I would say, you can’t go wrong splurging with SilkAir, as they put out a quality product, even if it is just a 90 minute flight.

You can read more about using Singapore KrisFlyer here, as well as some examples.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: Singapore Airlines, Singapore KrisFlyer

Leveraging Singapore’s Krisflyer program from Singapore

August 6, 2014 By Trevor 4 Comments

Introduction

Yesterday, I looked at some hotel choices that looked pretty nice in Southeast Asia, now I just have to identify options for getting around. Since I’ll be flying into and out of Singapore, the logical choice is using Singapore’s KrisFlyer program.

Award Chart

The Krisflyer program determines the cost of the award by zones (15 of them). As you can imagine, with 15 zones, the chart is pretty big, so I’ve got a snipped subset below.

Krisflyer Saver One Way award chart - zones 1-9.

KrisFlyer Saver One Way award chart – zones 1-9.

If you want to look at the full award chart, you can find it here.

I did a brief search with KrisFlyer’s calculator, and had to beef it up to Business class to narrow it down to just 35 destinations costing 20,000 (or 7,500 or 12,500 miles in economy) or fewer KrisFlyer Miles. This is at the saver level, but I think it really shows the value if you are originating in Singapore.

Mapping Singapore's Zone 1 and 2 awards www.gcmap.com

Mapping Singapore’s Zone 1 to Zones 2 & 3 awards www.gcmap.com

But wait! It gets better! If you book it all online, you can save 15% the miles!

How to get Singapore KrisFlyer Miles

The KrisFlyer program is one of the easiest to transfer miles to, as you can move points from all three major “transferable points” programs, that is, Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR), American Express Membership Rewards (MR), and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Rewards. I’ve tested transferring points from all three programs, and noticed no lag transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards points to KrisFlyer. SPG on the other hand has had a delay.

So really, the question isn’t necessarily how to get KrisFlyer miles so much as it is about getting UR, MR, or SPG points (Update: You can also transfer Citi Thank-you points!). I think the chart below underscores why transferable points are so great.

Chase UR, American Express MR and SPG Airline Transfer Partners.

Chase UR, American Express MR and SPG Airline Transfer Partners.

Conclusion

This was just a quick overview of Singapore’s KrisFlyer program’s cool uses when you’re in Singapore. There are other benefits to flying Singapore Airlines if you’re visiting Singapore (such as discounted hop-on-hop-off bus tickets), I’ll try to cover that after I return, so I’ll have the freshest information. I’m sure the savvier of you are already thinking that there has to be some sweet spots on the KrisFlyer chart – I’ll start looking through and see if I can find anything fun to write about and hopefully have something next week.

Note: Kenny at Miles4More has a great series for sweet spots across a variety of airline programs.

 

 

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Travel Programs Tagged With: Award Miles, Singapore KrisFlyer, Southeast Asia, Travel

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