Singapore Airlines, three business tickets to Australia at no cost: here's the secret
In these months of lockdowns, flight cancellations, helplessness in the face of the bankruptcy of dozens of airlines and [...]
Singapore Airlines
SYD
In these months of lockdowns, of flight cancellations, of helplessness in the face of the bankruptcy of dozens of airlines and the layoff of thousands of workers, I have not lost the desire to travel and to fly.
In this article:
Of course, it will be years before we get back to doing it "the way it used to be"...or maybe not, maybe we will find the solution and we will all get back to crowding the gates ready to board the next flight.
Here at The flight club we have all stopped flying, but not looking forward to the next trip. In 2021 I was planning two very special trips: my first world tour and my first vacation "away from home" post lockdown.
In Easter 2021, I had optimistically planned to go to Australia. However, the pandemic seems to be undeterred, and the Australian government anticipated that the borders will not be reopened before the end of next year, in one fell swoop this announcement effectively canceled both of my plans, both the round-the-world trip (I would have gone through Sydney) and my family vacation.
Reservation
These minor inconveniences, however, do not affect how I was able to peel off three tickets with a total value of more than 7,000 without spending a single euro, in fact earning it.
Once we as a family identified the destination, we considered the route to travel to the other side of the world. The options, as always in this case, were 3.
The first involved leaving from London and take the direct flight to Perth and move from there by internal flights. Discarded immediately, too challenging a flight of over 17 hours with a 6-year-old girl. Of course, taking one of the longest flights in the world has its appeal, but when traveling as a family it is always best to weigh all the possibilities.
The second option was to exploit a connection through one of the 3 sisters (Emirates, Qatar or Ethiad) with the first flight from Italy, so the trip would be split into a 6-hour flight and a 13-hour flight.
Eventually we got opted for the third option, which is to lengthen the first leg by moving closer to the destination final so as to break the journey almost in half.
The choice ended up on Singapore Airlines, after also evaluating other carriers such as Cathay, Eva Air and the various Chinese companies. There would also have been a fourth possibility, flying westward and then via the United States or South America.
The Singapore carrier was one of the first to activate policies to help travelers by leaving the option to move/cancel reservations made before August 2020, as well as the opportunity to add a stopover Both on the outward and return journey without any extra charge.
Business Class Singapore Airlines 787/10
We also chose this company for another reason: The chance to travel once again on the A380, the airplane that was supposed to transport us into the 22nd century and will instead exit the scene much sooner than expected partly because of Covid. Singapore Airlines was the first airline to fly the giant of the skies, and a few months before the crisis broke out it had completed the revamping of its entire fleet by introducing brand new first-class double suites and equally new business classes.
At the time of the booking (now it will need to be figured out how and which iron will be operating on the routes in the itinerary), it planned to fly almost the entire long-haul fleet of the company, also voted the best in the world for 2020.
To be able to test the differences between service aboard the brand new A350/1000, the more modern version of the A380 with the brand new king bed suite option, and the iconic Boeing 777/300 all in one itinerary...Well, that's not something that happens every day.
How did I not pay for the tickets
No tricks, no deception. To pay for the tickets, I used my points membership rewards.
In the image below, you can see the cost in euros of the tickets, my 6-year-old daughter's costing €1,820 and mine and my wife's €2,638 each. A total of €7,096
But back to the membership rewards points. I had two options: transfer the points to Singapore Airlines' Krysflier program and book award tickets or discount the spend directly from the American Express app.
In the first option I would have had to search for the availability of 3 award seats on the entire itinerary, which was not an easy search given that it was a peak season. In addition, I would have had to use 900k KF points, which, with an exchange rate of 4:5, Would have become 1,230,000 MR. This was the only way I would be able to peel off 3 prize tickets.
I chose to take advantage of the shop with points, even though we put it on the list of "things not to do almost never with MRs." In this case, however, it was useful; now I'll explain why.
In the past few months American Express has been very prolific when it comes to offers for its customers, double MR for every euro spent and even triple MR in case of purchases on the travel site, but not only that. For a period of 3 months it offered a supervaluation of MRs, going from the usual conversion 1000 MR= 4 euros to 1000 MR= 8 euros.
Thanks to this promo, reserved to holders of American Express Platinum the same tickets paid for using MR cost me only 883,500 points, a savings of 50%. But not only that, I also earned about 20 thousand MR with the transaction, which obviously would not have happened if I had issued the award ticket.
The purchase of the ticket Will help renew my Gold Star Alliance status and allow me to earn 25,500 miles On my Tap Portugal account.
All while maintaining the ability to change/cancel the flight and get a full refund of the ticket cost.
Have you ever used Amex's "shop with points" solution? Tell us about it in the comments
