Singapore Airlines has introduced a new service fee for RTW bookings and it’s not cheap
Singapore Airlines recently snuck in a $250 USD (about $379 AUD) fee for new KrisFlyer Star Alliance round-the-world award bookings.
Introduced on 1 March 2023 – without warning – the new service fee will involve an additional charge of $25 USD for any further servicing.
The Singapore Airlines website has quietly published information about the service fee on its ‘service fees’ page, as outlined below.
So unless you’re a PPS Club member or a supplementary cardholder, you’ll need to pay the initial service fee, plus an additional fee for any servicing that follows your redemption booking.
The additional service fee of $25 USD (or 2,500 KrisFlyer miles) will apply for the following services:
- redemption ticket bookings
- redemption ticket changes (including redepositing of miles for awards)
- redemption upgrades
- KrisFlyer membership services, including updating of passport details, adding or changing Redemption Group Nominees
Note that these offline service fees will be waived for transactions that cannot be completed online (as well as for PPS Club members and supplementary cardholders).
Why the fee?
As it stands, KrisFlyer members can’t book a Star Alliance round-the-world ticket online (hence there previously being no fee for phone bookings).
Now, whether you book via phone, email or in-person at the Singapore Airlines service centre (at the ION Orchard mall), you’ll be charged $250 USD and a further $25 USD for any changes to the booking.
While Singapore Airlines hasn’t given a clear reason for the change, we know round-the-world award redemptions have become increasingly difficult to book.
It makes sense that Singapore Airlines is now charging for the labour intensive task of booking (and servicing) a round-the-world award reservation.
What is a KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW award?
The Star Alliance round-the-world award allows KrisFlyer members to fly around the world on any fellow Star Alliance member airlines for a fixed number of miles.
As well as adding carrier charges on top, frequent flyers will now be hit with the $250 USD service fee.
For example, Lufthansa slugs passengers with a fuel surcharge of $405 USD on a one-way business class ticket from Singapore to Munich.
This means passengers travelling on a round-the-world award would need to fork out at least $655 USD (around $993 AUD), plus surcharges on flights with other airlines.
In saying this, the sum of the fees are still going to be a lot less than paying cash for the same itinerary.
How much does a KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW award cost?
Back in July 2022, we saw Singapore Airlines increase the cost of award tickets and upgrades by 11-17% as part of a program devaluation.
The current prices for a KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW ticket are:
- 200,000 KrisFlyer miles for economy class
- 280,000 KrisFlyer miles for business class
- 405,000 KrisFlyer miles for first class
Summing up
Singapore Airlines has started charging a $250 USD (about $379 AUD) booking fee for all round-the-world awards booked after 1 March 2023.
Frequent flyers will also need to pay an additional $25 USD fee for any servicing requests, however, both sets of fees are waived for PPS Club members and supplementary cardholders.
While we could all do without this extra fee, we can only hope that Singapore Airlines will use it to better train call centre staff to sift out those nearly impossible-to-find award redemptions.
What do you think of the new KrisFlyer RTW award booking fee?
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Thanks for the update. We’ve been using SQKrisflyer business redemptions to Europe for years & love the ease of obtaining seats ( albeit sometime 11-12mnths in advance.
With reservation systems only open up to 355days in advance, how do you hypothetically book a 3-6mnth RTW or RT ticket that you start the 1st sector 12mnths in advance? Kb
Hi there, our understanding is that unlike the Qantas oneworld Classic Reward, Krisflyer requires the entire itinerary to be booked in one go. It is possible to change individual dates or carriers for individual segments once an itinerary is locked in, however the initial routing is fixed.
With this in mind, it would probably make sense to book an itinerary, and use dummy dates or a non-preferred airline where you can’t locate availability, with the aim of changing to a preferred flight date/carrier later.