Singapore Airlines Pulls Some Business Class Awards From Partners

Last week, we shared the great news that United Airlines was once again displaying Singapore award availability on its website, making it much easier to search for — and book — MileagePlus awards.

At the time, Singapore Airlines was still restricting access to its best business and first-class awards as it's done for years, limiting the latest premium products to members redeeming miles from the carrier's own KrisFlyer program. As a result, anyone looking to redeem miles for business or first class on the Airbus A350, Airbus A380 or Boeing 777-300ER would need to book directly through Singapore, rather than using a partner program, like United MileagePlus or Aeroplan.

There was one exception to this rule, however — Singapore was making business class awards on its new A350 available to partners specifically for flights between SIN and some destinations in Australia. And, that availability was fantastic, as you can see in this October 3 screenshot:

The situation is entirely different today — these awards no longer appear on United.com, and both United and Aeroplan phone agents were unable to see the space.

There's availability through Singapore's own KrisFlyer program, though, so it's clear that the airline is restricting partner access rather than pulling award space on the route entirely.

The good news is that Singapore partners will all transferrable points currencies — including Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou and Starwood Preferred Guest — so it's still entirely possible to book these seats. You'll just need to redeem many more miles to do so, considering KrisFlyer charges 58,000 miles for the same award you could book for 30,000 MileagePlus miles just last week.

Have you been able to book business or first class award seats with partner miles?