Just over a month ago, Singapore Airlines launched online redemption for Star Alliance and partner airlines through their KrisFlyer website portal.
Unfortunately, despite the fanfare, it was an unmitigated mess. SIA claimed that they had never said it would work for all airlines on day one (they had), and that any itinerary which could not be booked online could be booked though the call centre with the new offline service fees waived (i.e. the old way).
A week later, not much had changed, and we created a table showing the airlines whose flights could and could not be booked through the online system. We decided to revisit that list of airlines today, around one month on from the initial launch.
It’s better news this time
Back in mid December, flights from only 33% of Star Alliance partner airlines could be booked via the online system. That’s improved significantly – to 85% (23 out of 27 airlines). Here are the airlines whose flights are now bookable, in addition to those mentioned in the last update:
- Adria Airways (JP)
- All Nippon Airways (NH)
- Austrian Airlines (OS)
- Avianca Brazil (O6) (i.e. partial Avianca)
- Brussels Airlines (SN)
- Copa Airlines (CM)
- Croatia Airlines (OU)
- EgyptAir (MS)
- Ethiopian Airlines (ET)
- Thai Airways (TG)
- LOT Polish Airlines (LO)
- Shenzhen Airlines (ZH)
- South African Airways (SA)
- United Airlines (UA)
The updated list
As of 10th January 2018, these are the airlines you can and can’t search and redeem awards online with, using the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer system.
Partner airlines
Alaska Airlines (AS)* |
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Virgin America (VX) |
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Virgin Australia (VA) |
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Vistara (UK) |
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* Note that we originally stated that Alaska Airlines partner awards were showing, but I think it was getting very late that night, and we were just getting confused with Alaska / Virgin America awards. Alaska is not working.
We don’t know about Virgin Atlantic, as they so heavily restrict award availability to KrisFlyer members it’s nearly impossible to determine whether they are or aren’t able to be booked online. If anyone has found any online VS award flights, do let us know.
Star Alliance airlines
Adria Airways (JP) |
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Aegean Airlines (A3) |
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Air Canada (AC) |
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Air China (CA) |
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Air India (AI) |
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Air New Zealand (NZ) |
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All Nippon Airways (NH) |
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Asiana Airlines (OZ) |
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Austrian Airlines (OS) |
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Avianca (AV) |
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Brussels Airlines (SN) |
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Copa Airlines (CM) |
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Croatia Airlines (OU) |
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EgyptAir (MS) |
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Ethiopian Airlines (ET) |
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EVA Air (BR) |
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LOT Polish Airlines (LO) |
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Lufthansa (LH) |
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Scandinavian Airlines (SK) |
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Shenzhen Airlines (ZH) |
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South African Airways (SA) |
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Swiss International Air Lines (LX) |
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TAP Air Portugal (TP) |
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Thai Airways (TG) |
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Turkish Airlines (TK) |
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United Airlines (UA) |
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Star Alliance ‘connecting partners’
Juneyao Airlines (HO) |
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Sort of?
Air New Zealand is ‘sort of’ because we found Star Award itineraries with them which can be booked through KrisFlyer online, but also ones which can’t. So basically it works for some routes, and not for others. This is still the case at 10th January.
Interestingly, the award seats we found that it doesn’t work for (but which are available, and you can still book with KrisFlyer over the phone), were all for business class redemptions, like Sydney to Auckland.
Avianca is a little more complicated, as it is actually 8 airlines in one. We found that only one of those 8 – Avianca Brazil (O6) has redemptions currently available online through KrisFlyer. If you’re looking for flights with carriers like Avianca Ecuador or Avianca Peru, for example, you’ll still need to call.
Some flight durations are very wrong
We noticed that with many of these new Star Alliance carriers, the KrisFlyer system is not calculating the flight durations correctly. Some flights show a negative duration, and some are exceedingly longer than in reality.
This may be originating from some incorrect time zone assumptions for the cities involved. The local departure and arrival times themselves are displayed correctly, but if the flight / journey duration is important to you – we would recommend calculating it yourself.
Summary
The addition of 14 new airlines to the redemption search list is encouraging news, and brings us almost to a full suite of Star Alliance carriers to search. There are still a few key airlines in the region missing (strange that we now have Copa Airlines but not Asiana for example, or that we can search Brussels Airlines but not Air India).
Hopefully the remaining carriers will be added soon, in the meantime you can still search all Star Award redemptions using the United MileagePlan site, or ‘KVS’ tool.
(Cover Photo: Felix Gottwald)