Singapore Airlines has announced a change to its mySQupgrade instant upgrade programme, which offers travellers the option to top-up their fare with cash on selected flights to sit in a higher cabin class, from 72 to nine hours prior to departure time, subject to availability.

While the offer can sometimes be unattractively expensive, depending on your original fare type and how many seats the airline has left to offer in these higher cabins, there can be some good deals too.

Indeed I have previously used it to upgrade an Economy Flexi ticket purchased by my company on the Singapore – Bangkok route to Business Class, for a S$240 top-up, which I considered worthwhile for the additional perks.

Bookings with children are no longer eligible

Effective from 9th June 2026, any booking that includes a child is no longer eligible to receive mySQupgrade offers.

Here’s the ‘before and after’ policy, based on SIA’s mySQupgrade FAQs.

Bookings containing infants (those aged under 2 years who do not occupy a seat) have always been excluded, but adding children (aged 2–11 years on the date of travel) to the list will affect a far wider range of bookings.

This will be disappointing news for families, who are far more likely than most to be travelling on a single booking that now falls foul of the exclusion.

For completeness, the full list of ineligible scenarios now reads:

The change is more sweeping than it might first appear.

Until now, a booking containing a child could still be offered mySQupgrade online, though as SIA’s own FAQs above set out, only on an ‘all or nothing’ basis. In other words you had to upgrade every passenger in the booking, including the child(ren), all at the same per-passenger price.

That at least let a family move up to a better cabin together. Upgrading only some passengers has never been possible online, that has always required calling Singapore Airlines to split the booking first, as we cover below.

Now even the whole-booking upgrade option is gone. A booking containing a child or infant is simply never selected for a mySQupgrade offer in the first place, so there is no way to upgrade any members of the family at all while they remain on a single booking – they won’t be offered one.

The fare-type eligibility rules are unchanged, so all Economy Standard (M, H, W) and Flexi (Y, B, E), plus Premium Economy Standard (L, P) and Flexi (S, T) tickets remain eligible, but from now on any booking that includes a child or infant is excluded regardless of the fare booked.

This comes nearly two years after SIA removed award tickets and cheaper Economy and Premium Economy fares from the mySQupgrade eligibility club.

You will not receive an upgrade offer if you are travelling on a paid Business Class fare, even if your flight does feature a First Class or Suites cabin, because SIA stopped offering mySQupgrade to First Class / Suites back in January 2023.

The workaround? Split the booking

There’s a catch, however.

Since children and infants can’t travel alone, at least one adult must remain on the booking with them, and that booking will remain ineligible for mySQupgrade. In a typical two-parent, two-child family, that means only one parent could be moved onto an upgradeable, child-free PNR, and they would end up sitting apart from the rest of the family assuming an upgrade came through at the right price.

It’s a little easier when there’s a ‘spare’ adult.

Take two parents and two children travelling with a grandparent on a single booking. Ask Singapore Airlines to split the grandparent (or the grandparent and one parent) onto a separate PNR, or book them on a separate standalone ticket from the outset, and they become eligible for an upgrade offer, while the remaining adult stays with the children.

In all honesty this was often the better approach anyway. Bookings with just one or two passengers tend to be offered mySQupgrade more readily than larger ones.

Bear in mind that each adult can accompany a maximum of one infant and five children under SIA policy, which limits how far you can rearrange passengers across bookings, especially with several little ones in tow.

In all cases, paid last-minute upgrades may still be available at the check-in desk, regardless of your ticket type, fare category and the age of those in your group.

How mySQupgrade works

SIA’s mySQupgrade option was first launched in 2016, though back in those days it was a bidding system where you hade to make a cash offer to upgrade your flight, on a sliding scale. There was a minimum and maximum bid, and the more you offered the higher the likelihood that your bid would be successful.

This changed in 2022 and mySQupgrade now offers a fixed price upgrade from 72 hours (3 days) prior to departure, the cost of which varies based on your booked cabin class and fare type, revenue fares and upgrade space availability.

Here’s a summary of how mySQupgrade works.

Singapore Airlines will email you if you are eligible for a mySQupgrade offer for your upcoming flight, including a link to the offer itself, but you can also check whether your ticket is eligible by entering your booking details here.

  CHECK mySQupgrade ELIGIBILITY

Singapore Airlines has withdrawn mySQupgrade offers from any booking that includes a child, on top of the existing exclusion for bookings containing infants.

For families on a single booking, the only route to an advance paid upgrade offer is now to split the PNR so that the adults wishing to upgrade travel on a separate PNR from any children or infants, remembering that each adult can accompany at most one infant and five children.

Thankfully most revenue fares remain eligible, though award ticket were sadly removed a couple of years ago, and smaller bookings tend to be offered upgrades more readily in any case.

(Cover Photo: Singapore Airlines)