How to redeem Singapore – Koh Samui flights from just 6,000 miles

Back in late March 2020, as the COVID-19 situation led to strict border restrictions, SIA’s full-service regional subsidiary SilkAir suspended its twice daily flights between Singapore and the popular Thai holiday resort island of Koh Samui.

While it was hoped the situation was temporary, sadly the prolonged nature of the pandemic meant that by the time leisure travel to and from Thailand was feasible again, SilkAir was already a thing of the past, with operations merged into its parent company Singapore Airlines.

Worse still, the airline had returned its pair of Airbus A319s to their lessors. These aircraft were exclusively used to operate to and from Koh Samui due to aircraft size restrictions imposed by the airport owner and operator, Bangkok Airways.

In a seemingly short-sighted decision, it left the SIA Group with no planes that could fly the Koh Samui route anymore.

Bangkok Airways monopoly

In August 2021, Bangkok Airways restarted Singapore – Koh Samui flights, three times per week, though frequencies were later hiked to daily in mid-2022, with the airline’s full pre-COVID twice-daily schedule finally returning to the route from December 2022.

It means Bangkok Airways now has a monopoly on Singapore – Koh Samui flights, as it does on many routes to and from the island.

This will likely remain the only link between Singapore and Koh Samui for the immediate future, since Singapore Airlines, Scoot and Jetstar Asia no longer operate any aircraft compatible with the island’s small airport.

This of course leads to high fares, typically around S$450-500 each way for a short-notice booking over a weekend. We’ve even seen one-way fares of S$1,000 over the Christmas period!

Even with more advance planning, for example if you’re looking to travel in March 2024, you can still expect to pay around S$270-300 each way for these flights, especially for travel over a weekend.

The lack of SilkAir services also somewhat restricts award redemption possibilities, since the carrier’s former twice daily flights are no longer in operation, removing the KrisFlyer award option.

This would currently cost 13,500 KrisFlyer miles one-way in Economy Class and 24,000 miles in Business Class for a saver award, assuming Singapore Airlines was still operating the route!

Redemption options

Bangkok Airways isn’t part of a major airline alliance, but luckily the airline has partnerships with many other carriers, meaning you can redeem miles held in a variety of frequent flyer programmes for its flights.

For the Singapore – Koh Samui route, redeeming Avios points via the Qatar Airways Privilege Club is currently the cheapest redemption option out there, thanks to a recent 60% cut in award pricing for partner carrier bookings.

It means you can now score an award seat on this route for only 6,000 Avios one-way in Economy Class.

That’s by far the lowest miles outlay for this route, but there are other options out there too, as shown in the following table.

Bangkok Airways Award Pricing
Singapore ⇄ Koh Samui
Economy Class (one-way)

Frequent Flyer Programme	Miles or Points	Taxes & Fees
		SIN-USM	USM-SIN
Qatar Airways Privilege Club	6,000	S$125.90	S$90.20
British Airways Executive Club (via Qatar Airways)
Bangkok Airways FlyerBonus	9,000	S$125.90	S$90.20
Asia Miles	10,000	S$125.90	S$90.20
JAL Mileage Bank	12,000	S$125.90	S$90.20
Qantas Frequent Flyer	14,000	S$64.20	S$28.50
Emirates Skywards	14,000	S$125.90	S$90.20
Air France-KLM Flying Blue	17,500	S$64.20	S$28.50

You can transfer credit card points to miles in all the above programmes from a variety of credit cards in Singapore, with the exception of Bangkok Airways FlyerBonus and JAL Mileage Bank.

For example, you can transfer Citi Miles 1:1 into Qatar Airways Avios, or HSBC T1 points 2.5:1 into British Airways Avios, to unlock the 6,000 Avios rate each way on this route.

Online booking is available with Qantas Frequent Flyer and Air-France KLM Flying Blue, but for redemptions using other programmes you’ll have to call, or submit a form, or use an online chat function, to lock in your award seats on Bangkok Airways flights.

Fuel surcharge

As you can see from the table above, Bangkok Airways imposes a fairly hefty fuel surcharge of around S$60 in each direction on this route, which you’ll pay in addition to the mandatory airport and government taxes when redeeming miles.

However, Qantas Frequent Flyer and Air France-KLM Flying Blue do not pass on this fuel surcharge with their redemptions, which is why those awards have a much lower cash outlay compared to other programmes.

However, provided you have Avios to redeem, the cash saving with these programmes does not usually outweigh the miles saved, especially in the case of Flying Blue, which charges the most for these awards at 17,500 miles each way.

You can redeem with British Airways Avios

As you can see, we’ve included British Airways Avios as a redemption option in the table above at the same 6,000 points rate for Singapore – Koh Samui flights, but as you may know Bangkok Airways is not a BA redemption partner.

This works because Qatar Airways also uses the Avios frequent flyer currency, the loyalty points of the IAG Group.

You can easily link your British Airways Avios and Qatar Airways Avios accounts (see this guide) and make unlimited instant transfers back and forth between the two.

If you have Avios in British Airways Executive Club, but don’t have a Qatar Airways Privilege Club (QRPC) account, simply open one for free, ensuring your name matches exactly with your BA account.

You’ll then be able to link the accounts and move your BA Avios 1:1 across to QRPC, in order to redeem Bangkok Airways flights for 6,000 points a pop.

What happened to Etihad Guest?

It was previously possible to redeem 15,000 Etihad Guest miles each way on Bangkok Airways flights between Singapore and Koh Samui.

This would have reduced to 12,000 miles each way under the programme’s new partner award chart that took effect earlier this year, however there’s some bad news.

Bangkok Airways was quietly removed as a redemption option for the Etihad Guest programme in mid-2022, so you can no longer redeem these miles for Koh Samui flights.

How to search Bangkok Airways award space

Bangkok Airways allows its own FlyerBonus members to search and book award space online, but as far as partner redemptions are concerned the two platforms you should be using to ascertain award space on PG flights are:

• Air France-KLM Flying Blue
• Qantas Frequent Flyer

For both of these programmes, you’ll need to be logged in to your frequent flyer account in order to perform an award search, but you can do so even with a zero balance in your account.

Don’t worry if you won’t actually be using one of these programmes to book – Bangkok Airways offers identical award space to all its partner airlines, so you’re just using these to check if award space is available on your preferred dates and flights first.

You can then proceed to book with another programme, like Qatar Airways Privilege Club, via their offline method.

Is it worth it?

Usually, yes!

As we already mentioned, Bangkok Airways charges high fares on this route, so if award space is available it’s almost always an excellent use of your miles or points, especially with the best of the bunch – Avios.

For example, if you want to fly from Singapore to Koh Samui on Thursday 11th January 2024 on PG968, the fare is an eye-watering S$400.20 one-way.

A quick search shows that award space is available on this flight.

Here’s how the value per mile stacks up, depending on which FFP you book this award seat with, assuming of course your alternative would be to simply stump up and pay the cash fare.

Bangkok Airways Award
Value per Mile

Frequent Flyer Programme	Miles or Points	Cash Saving	Value per Mile
Qatar Airways Privilege Club	6,000	S$400.20 – S$125.90 = S$274.30	4.57¢
British Airways Executive Club (via Qatar Airways)
Bangkok Airways FlyerBonus	9,000	S$400.20 – S$125.90 = S$274.30	3.05¢
Asia Miles	10,000	S$400.20 – S$125.90 = S$274.30	2.75¢
JAL Mileage Bank	12,000	S$400.20 – S$125.90 = S$274.30	2.29¢
Qantas Frequent Flyer	14,000	S$400.20 – S$64.20 = S$336.00	2.40¢
Emirates Skywards	14,000	S$400.20 – S$125.90 = S$274.30	1.96¢
Air France-KLM Flying Blue	17,500	S$400.20 – S$64.20 = S$336.00	1.92¢

The value per mile using Avios points for this redemption is off-the-charts-good for Economy Class, but even using other schemes like Asia Miles you’re getting well north of what you’d typically expect when redeeming miles for flights like this.

Singapore – Koh Samui flight schedule

Here’s how the Bangkok Airways’ twice daily flight schedule looks on the Singapore – Koh Samui route during the northern winter season between now and 30th March 2024.

Singapore ⇄ Koh Samui
29th October 2023 – 30th March 2024

			Days
			M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	PG968 A319
SIN 17:10		USM 18:05
	PG962 A319
SIN 20:10		USM 21:05
	PG963 A319
USM 13:25		SIN 16:20
	PG961 A319
USM 16:25		SIN 19:20

For the northern summer season in 2024, the same pair of flights operate each day with slightly different timings, as shown below.

Singapore ⇄ Koh Samui
31st March 2024 – 26th October 2024

			Days
			M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	PG968 A319
SIN 17:20		USM 18:25
	PG962 A319
SIN 20:15		USM 21:20
	PG963 A319
USM 13:30		SIN 16:25
	PG961 A319
USM 16:25		SIN 19:20

Our booking experience

It’s been some time since we visited Koh Samui, so we recently decided to plan a trip to the island for February 2024, and we managed to redeem using both Avios and Asia Miles, which is basically what brought about this article!

Why not use Avios for both flights? Well, following the recent Asia Miles devaluation, we’ve whittled down our balance to only around 15,000 each in that scheme, and for now we’re just looking to ‘cash out’ of that programme, so it was a good opportunity to do so for one leg of the journey.

Searching award space was easy – we actually found that the Air France Flying Blue portal has the upper hand on the Qantas one, because even if you search award space for one adult it actually shows you exactly how many partner award seats are available on each flight in the results.

With availability on our preferred dates, we just had to complete the offline booking process with Asia Miles (outbound) and Qatar Airways Privilege Club (inbound).

Here’s how that went.

Asia Miles booking

For Asia Miles, there is a Flight Award Request Form to complete for making partner award bookings with Bangkok Airways and eight other partners for whom online search and booking is not offered (at the time of writing – Air Canada, Air New Zealand, American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Gulf Air, Lufthansa, Shenzhen Airlines and Swiss).

Take our advice – don’t bother with it!

The form itself doesn’t appear to submit to Asia Miles at the moment – you just get end up on a blank screen, with no confirmation or email notification that you’ve made any request.

Cathay Pacific has a WhatsApp chat function, where you can speak directly to an agent, who can ticket the award for you there and then.

After confirming award space (that we already saw on the Flying Blue site), the agent proceeded to ticket the awards. You’ll also get an email confirmation of the travel itinerary.

You are then sent a separate payment link by email to settle the taxes and fees by credit card, which you must do within 24 hours, otherwise the award will be cancelled and the Asia Miles refunded.

Once payment is made, the eTicket is then sent to you. You can use the booking reference to log on to your booking via the Bangkok Airways site and select your seat and other optional extras like additional baggage allowance, just as though you had booked directly with the airline.

Qatar booking

For the return sector, we used the exceptional 6,000 Qatar Avios points rate to redeem.

First thing to note when booking via QRPC is that sufficient Avios must be at the Qatar Airways side of the programme in order to proceed. If you have 6,000 Avios in British Airways but none in QRPC, for example, they can’t do it.

Make sure to combine your Avios first, so that your QRPC account has a sufficient balance to ticket the award.

Qatar Airways has a search form for awards with partner airlines like Bangkok Airways. Here you simply find the flight you want to redeem (all flights are listed, whether there is award space or not), select it, them complete and submit the form to request the redemption.

The flight is then usually ticketed 24-48 hours later, with a link to make payment for the applicable taxes and fees.

It is also possible to immediately search and ticket award space with the airline’s online chat function, but they are reluctant to ticket your flight if it is more than 30 days from now (insisting you want to lock it in now seems to work, but it seems a bit rude!).

Qatar Airways gives you 48 hours (two days) to pay the taxes and fees for the booking, otherwise it will be cancelled and the Avios will be redeposited into your account.

Following the payment link and entering your booking PNR and last name will bring up the payment confirmation.

In terms of value, our flights weren’t quite as expensive as the excellent example shown above, but we still achieved a cents per mile redeemed rate of 1.9 cents for the Asia Miles redemption and 4.1 cents for the Qatar Avios one.

For us that’s a very nice value to get from a small balance of (otherwise orphan) Asia Miles, and of course a simply excellent return for Avios points, exceeding that of many Business Class redemptions.

Scoot to the rescue?

The SIA Group has been struggling for a solution to its withdrawal from the lucrative Singapore – Koh Samui route since it stopped operating aircraft small enough to be permitted to operate there back in 2020.

As we mentioned earlier, SilkAir retired these A319 aircraft during the pandemic, leaving SIA with no compatible types to use to and from the airport, which is privately owned by Bangkok Airways, who set the rules on what size of planes can and can’t use it.

However, SIA’s low-cost subsidiary Scoot may have the solution.

The carrier has ordered nine Embraer E190-E2 regional jets, that fall well within Koh Samui’s operating restrictions (in fact they are far smaller than the upper aircraft size limit imposed), making it a potential option to plug this gap in the Group’s network.

The first two aircraft are due for delivery in March 2024, with the remaining seven the carrier has on order due to arrive between April 2024 and the end of 2025.

Sadly Scoot won’t offer a good KrisFlyer redemption option if it starts this route, like SilkAir used to.

Awards on the low-cost carrier are currently revenue-based, and terrible value, but hopefully fares might at least be lower, and additional timing options compared to Bangkok Airways would be another useful element in the mix.

The problem is, Scoot is unlikely to provide a particularly cheap option to Koh Samui either.

On a route 70% reliant on transit traffic, which the low cost carrier will surely be tapping into via codeshare and interline with Singapore Airlines if it starts this service, there will simply be no need for Scoot to provide particularly low fares on Koh Samui flights, with only 112 seats to fill.

Indeed the lack of a good KrisFlyer redemption option with the carrier, like there was in the SilkAir days, could make it an even less attractive choice than a redemption on Bangkok Airways, especially with the 6,000 Avios option in play.

If fares are high – the Avios option is probably better – and don’t forget Bangkok Airways provides a full-service experience with better legroom, free meals and drinks on board.

The biggest benefit Scoot would probably provide is additional timing options for the Singapore – Koh Samui route.

While Bangkok Airways only offers evening services out of Singapore, so that it can tap connecting passengers from Europe and Australia arriving on the likes of Qantas, Emirates, Air France and KLM, Scoot can play a different tactic.

Singapore Airlines also has arrivals from these parts of the world in the morning, which previously allowed SilkAir to fill its planes with connecting passengers at 8.10am and 10.40am each day, and we expect Scoot would replicate similar timings, for the same reason.

This would give Singapore-based travellers an alternative option to reach Koh Samui much earlier in the day, helping them to maximise their trip, perhaps even using Scoot outbound and Bangkok Airways for the way back home.

It’s definitely a development we’ll be watching closely, as Scoot promises to reveal its initial E190 destination list in the coming months, but if you’re hoping for ~S$90 fares – prepare to be disappointed.

Flights between Singapore and Koh Samui remain very expensive with Bangkok Airways now enjoying a monopoly on the route, offering two daily flights that cater 70% to transit passengers connecting to and from other parts of the world.

That leaves relatively few seats for the airline to sell directly to the Singapore market, so of course they don’t make it cheap – because they don’t need to.

The good news is that you can redeem miles or points with no fewer than eight different frequent flyer programmes to lock in a ticket on this route, starting from just 6,000 Avios one-way in Economy Class.

Award space is quite generous, especially when booking a few months or more ahead of your trip, and this option can yield a fantastic value per mile in excess of 4 cents – definitely worth redeeming rather than paying cash when you can.

Using the Qantas or Air France portals to search award space, then locking in your redemptions with Qatar Airways Privilege Club, is the best strategy of all.

Next year we might even see a Scoot option to and from Koh Samui, thanks to the introduction of regional jets in the low-cost carrier’s fleet, but we think the main benefit here will be more timing options for travellers – don’t hold your breath for particularly low fares.

(Cover Photo: Nieuwland Photography / Shutterstock)