News Singapore Airlines

PSA: Singapore Airlines has stopped loading award seats at T-355 days

Looking to jump on Singapore Airlines award space as soon as it's loaded 355 days in advance?

You can't do it right now - but don't worry - it's temporary!

Update 11th April 1.30pm: Singapore Airlines has now started loading its summer 2025 schedule into the reservation system. All awards and revenue flights from 30th March 2025 onwards are now available to book, up to T-355 days as usual.

As most of our readers know, a good time to jump on freshly-loaded Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer award space each day is at 8am SGT, 355 days in advance of your intended travel date, which is when the airline first loads flights into the reservation system.

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This can be a great strategy to score a pair of Saver Business Class award seats even on some of the most popular routes, like Singapore to London or non-stop to New York.

There are some slightly different timings you’ll need to be aware of to be the first in line for award seats originating in the USA, as we outlined in our full article here, but generally speaking its 8am Singapore Time for pretty much all flights across the network.

Here’s how the usual award opening time window looks, depending on your departure city.

KrisFlyer ‘fresh’ award space timings
(355 days before departure)

Departing from:
Singapore
and non-US cities
New York
(EWR/JFK)
Houston
(IAH)
US West Coast
(LAX/SEA/SFO)
8am SGT
(00:00 GMT)
1pm SGT
(01:00 EDT)
2pm SGT
(01:00 CDT)
4pm SGT
(01:00 PDT)
Departing from: Seats loaded:
Singapore
and non-US cities
8am SGT
(00:00 GMT)
New York
(EWR/JFK)
1pm SGT
(01:00 EDT)
Houston
(IAH)
2pm SGT
(01:00 CDT)
US West Coast
(LAX/SEA/SFO)
4pm SGT
(01:00 PDT)

If you’re not too adept at deducting 355 days from a particular date to determine when the new award space will come online for your desired flight, especially when there’s a leap year in play, don’t worry – we’ve got a handy calculator below for you to use.

If you’re not too adept at deducting 355 days from a particular date to determine when the new award space will come online for your desired flight, especially when there’s a leap year in play, don’t worry – we’ve got a handy calculator below for you to use.

For example, if your desired flight is departing out of Los Angeles on 1st May 2025, you’ll need to be online to book on 11th May 2024 at 4pm (16:00) Singapore Time to get access to the first release of both revenue and award seats.

Pretty much every year around this time in April, and at a similar point in November too, we get messages from shocked readers telling us that Singapore Airlines has loaded no new award space at the T-355 days mark.

Don’t panic.

SIA hasn’t suddenly decided to be stingy with award seats or change its policy, this actually happens twice per year when the T-355 days mark catches up with the IATA schedule season changeover.

  • IATA summer schedule
    Starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Saturday of October the same year
  • IATA winter schedule
    Starts on the last Sunday of October and ends on the last Saturday of March the following year

These seasons tie in with schedule changes, the coordination of takeoff and landing slots at many airports, and when much of the world changes its clocks due to daylight saving.

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The bookend that’s causing the current pause in new award seats being loaded is the winter 2024/25 season, which ends on 29th March 2025.

Singapore Airlines simply hasn’t started loading any flights for the northern summer 2025 season yet, which runs from 30th March 2025 to 25th October 2025.

No joy trying to jump on a Saver J flight to London on 30th March next year, even though the website lets you search for it

This doesn’t just apply to award seats, you can’t even book a revenue (cash) fare from 30th March 2025 onwards with Singapore Airlines, and probably won’t be able to for a little while.

Your booking window is now effectively being limited by the schedule loading, not by T-355 days.

Booking 355 days in advance usually means a good chance of at least two Business Class Saver awards, even on popular long-haul routes, but you can’t use this tactic at the moment. (Photo: MainlyMiles)

This is frustrating if you’re looking to jump on an award at T-355 that sits towards the start of the IATA season, since you don’t know exactly when it will be loaded, and therefore when to get online to book!

Singapore Airlines does not stick to a specific date when it comes to loading the next season’s schedule into the reservation system, so we can’t say for sure when the summer 2025 flights will appear.

Once it happens though, there’s a sudden ‘catch-up’ to the T-355 day mark, and the revenue and award space that hasn’t been loaded on a daily basis in the meantime gets dumped into the system all at once.

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Furthermore, 8am is not necessarily the time of day the airline will do this, our understanding is that it could happen at any time of day. Once SIA is happy with it – someone probably just presses a button!

Last year, this happened on 26th April – apparently during mid-afternoon Singapore Time. That doesn’t mean it will be exactly the same this year, it could be sooner or later than that.

Once SIA opens the summer 2025 season for booking, all flights in that season up to 355 days later get added at the same time. (Photo: TK Kurikawa / Shutterstock)

Update 11th April 1.30pm: Singapore Airlines has now started loading its summer 2025 schedule into the reservation system. All awards and revenue flights from 30th March 2025 onwards are now available to book, up to T-355 days as usual.

The key here is to monitor it on a regular basis. Once the schedule is loaded, the same generous award space that would have been initially loaded each day should be available to book for all the dates that have been ‘missing’ in the meantime.

We’ll update our Facebook and Telegram pages once the bookable schedule catches up to T-355 days this year, so be sure to follow us there to help you be first in line for the all-important award search, if this issue affects you.



 


 

Summary

Jumping on KrisFlyer award space for Singapore Airlines flights as soon as it’s loaded is a great strategy for getting ahead of the pack, provided of course that you can make travel plans well in advance, or accept the change or cancellation fee if it turns out the flight no longer works for you.

However, at this time of year and also in early November each year, the schedule loading doesn’t keep up with the T-355 days mark, so you become limited by the end date of next season’s flights instead, while SIA works to finalise at least an initial plan for the subsequent IATA timetable period.

While that’s frustrating if you were planning to use this tactic to score award seats in late March or early April next year, the only thing you really need to do now is keep checking until the flights suddenly appear all at once (just search regular fares if it’s quicker, since revenue and award space all gets loaded together).

You should then be able to access the usual generous T-355 award space for all the dates that get added in one fell swoop.

(Cover Photo: MainlyMiles)

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