When does Singapore Airlines first open award seats for booking?

One of the most effective ways to secure KrisFlyer award seats on Singapore Airlines is to book as early as possible – ideally right when availability is released, just under a year before departure.

That happens at ‘T-355 days’, or 355 days before the departure date for each flight, but the exact timing isn’t quite as simple as you might think.

There’s also been a change this year for anyone flying out of the USA, and we’ve rebuilt our calculator to take the date maths off your hands.

When does Singapore Airlines load fresh award space each day?

As most of our regular readers will know, this happens each day at 8am Singapore Time… right?

Well, yes in most cases that’s true – both revenue and award space on SIA flights is added at 00:00 GMT (which is 08:00 SGT) each day, 355 days in advance.

There are some exceptions though, as I discovered back in 2022 when trying to lock in two Business Class Saver awards on the same flight for a USA trip.

Redeeming from Singapore to San Francisco was no issue – two Saver awards appeared as usual at 8am Singapore Time on both of the airline’s daily flights on this route, and I locked a pair in for the evening SQ34 departure.

Doing so for the way back is what became a confusing matter.

It was then I realised there’s an exception to the 8am SGT rule – and it applies only to flights departing from four US cities – New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.

At 8am Singapore Time it is still only late afternoon or evening the previous calendar day in the USA, so if SIA loaded award space for those departures at that time it would effectively mean doing so 356 days in advance, which for whatever reason it doesn’t want to do.

Instead, for these departure points SIA loads fresh revenue and award space later in the Singapore day – at 12pm for flights leaving New York, and 3pm for those leaving the US West Coast.

Here’s how that looks.

KrisFlyer ‘fresh’ award space timings (355 days before departure)
Departing from:	Award space loads at:
Singapore and all non-US cities	8am SGT (00:00 GMT)
New York (EWR/JFK)	12pm SGT
US West Coast (LAX/SEA/SFO)	3pm SGT

Previously there was also a separate time to check for newly-loaded award redemptions on SIA’s flights from Houston to Manchester and Houston to Singapore via Manchester, however that route ended in March 2025.

Our award release calculator

Counting back 355 days isn’t hugely difficult, but it’s fiddly, and a leap year sitting in the middle of the count can easily trip you up. So we’ve built a calculator to do it for you, which you’ll find below.

Long-time readers may remember an earlier version of this tool – we’ve since rebuilt it from scratch, and it’s now hopefully much clearer and quicker to use.

Start by picking your departure point from the drop-down. That’s either Singapore (or any non-US airport), or one of the five US airports Singapore Airlines serves – Los Angeles, New York JFK, Newark, San Francisco and Seattle.

Then choose your preferred flight’s local departure date, and the tool will tell you the exact date, and the time in Singapore, that award space should first become bookable. There’s also a button to drop a reminder straight into your calendar, so the date doesn’t slip your mind.

Note that the calculator covers Singapore Airlines only. Scoot works to a different and much less predictable pattern, which we explain further down.

For example, if your desired flight is departing out of Los Angeles on 25th November 2027, you’ll need to be online to book on 5th December 2026 at 3pm (15:00) Singapore Time to get access to the first release of both revenue and award seats.

Finally for our international readers, here is the current date and time in Singapore for reference.

🇸🇬 Singapore Date and Time

What happened to the seasonal shift?

In recent years, these US timings moved twice a year – in step with American daylight saving. Through the northern winter, New York departures opened at 12pm Singapore Time and the West Coast at 3pm, then from March to November both slid by an hour, to 1pm and 4pm respectively.

That no longer appears to be the case. The switch to the later timings was due in March 2026 but doesn’t seem to have materialised, and our checks during the current daylight saving period show New York departures still loading at 12pm Singapore Time and the West Coast at 3pm.

On that basis, 12pm and 3pm now look like the year-round times.

We’d stop short of calling it permanent, since SIA has changed these timings before and could just as easily change them back. If award space from these cities hasn’t appeared when you expect it, check again an hour later than the time in the table above, and do let us know in the comments if you see that old seasonal pattern return.

Make sure you can search in the first place

There’s a new potential trap for anyone who has joined KrisFlyer recently.

Singapore Airlines now requires newly enrolled members to hold a minimum miles balance before they can search for award flights at all, and the threshold itself isn’t disclosed.

If you’ve recently joined and you’re planning to transfer credit card points across to fund a T-355 booking, move them well in advance rather than in the minutes before the release time. Turning up at 8am to find you can’t even run a search is a frustrating way to miss out.

Is award space guaranteed at T-355?

Unlike some frequent flyer programmes, KrisFlyer doesn’t guarantee any award space at the T-355 days mark, and certainly for First Class, Suites and even popular holiday periods in Business Class, you may see only Advantage space initially loaded.

That said, the T-355 window is often perfect timing for snagging a pair of Saver Business Class awards even on some of the carrier’s most popular long-haul flights – like Singapore to Frankfurt or non-stop services to the USA.

Even on the popular Singapore – London route, our September 2026 searches show that booking 355 days in advance can reveal 15 or more instantly confirmable Saver Business Class awards in a single day across five separate flights – including those to Gatwick. Availability does vary by season, so this will obviously depend on your desired travel period.

Closer to home it’s typically even more generous – for example you can snag six Saver Business Class awards on each of six Singapore – Bali flights 355 days from now.

That’s 36 Saver Business Class awards on a single route, all up for grabs on the same day, so effectively at least 36 people can lock in this routing using miles at the lowest rate in that cabin.

We’ve used this strategy in the past, even as basic KrisFlyer members, to redeem a pair of Singapore Airlines Saver Business Class awards to Cape Town and back, to the UK and back, and to the USA and back, so it’s worth considering if you can make reasonably certain travel plans almost a year in advance.

Good strategy for expiring miles

Booking almost a year in advance is potentially a great strategy if you have expiring miles, an issue which sadly began to rear its ugly head again in July 2023. That’s because you can use expiring miles to book future flights, even if they would have long expired by the time you actually step on board.

As you can see from our analysis of what to do with expiring miles, a flight redemption is almost always the best value way to ‘cash out’, especially in premium cabins, so do consider whether you can plan a trip 355 days in advance and try to lock in a redemption as soon as it becomes available.

Award space is added progressively

Grabbing award space on Singapore Airlines flights a year in advance is a great tactic, because most of the time the airline will offer a decent initial selection of redemption seats at this stage.

However, one of the most common misconceptions we hear about KrisFlyer award space on Singapore Airlines flights is the old adage “once it’s gone, it’s gone”.

This simply isn’t true.

For example, while there’s certainly no guarantee that once there are no more Saver Business Class awards on your desired flight that Singapore Airlines will load more closer to the departure time, the airline does actually load more in many cases.

Award space is dynamic and progressively loaded based on a number of factors that include booked cabin loads, number of days to departure and predicted occupancy / revenue management.

For the flight to San Francisco on which I booked two Saver Business Class seats at the exact T-355 day mark back in 2022, my booking had the effect of switching the next available redemption in this cabin only to the more expensive Advantage rate (not even waitlist for Saver).

However, one immediately confirmable Saver Business award seat was then loaded on the same service just a few days later – so there is simply no such thing as “all the saver award seats are gone”.

Keep checking is always our advice here – award space comes and goes.

Remember there is also a necessary element of randomness with KrisFlyer award space, so that predictable patterns of redemption availability don’t emerge, which is why you’ll sometimes see no award space offered, even on flights with almost empty cabins.

How late can you book?

Since we’re discussing how early award bookings become available, for the sake of completeness we should also mention how late you can book too – and here the two airlines differ again.

Commercial seats and KrisFlyer award seats stay available until the flight closes for commercial sale.

On Singapore Airlines that’s two hours before scheduled departure. On Scoot, SIA’s budget airline, the door shuts an hour sooner, at three hours before departure, so you have a slightly shorter window for a last-minute redemption.

You may think there will be no award space at that late stage, but there sometimes still is. For example, in the past we have seen six Saver Business Class awards on a Singapore Airlines flight to Malé in the Maldives, leaving in less than three hours!

Worth remembering if your plans change at short notice. Just note that on Scoot you’ll need to move an hour quicker than you would on SIA.

What about Scoot awards?

Scoot introduced KrisFlyer miles redemptions for its flights in August 2025, through a fixed, zone-based award chart.

There’s an important difference though, because Scoot no longer follows Singapore Airlines’ T-355 rule.

When we last checked in September 2025 it did, but Scoot now sells flights roughly a year ahead.

It doesn’t do so on a tidy daily schedule though, instead opening several departure dates at once and then pausing, so the furthest bookable date drifts somewhere between 363 and 365 days out. We couldn’t identify a consistent cutover time when we watched it in early September 2026.

Award seats are a separate question again, since a Scoot flight going on sale doesn’t mean redemptions appear on it at the same time. Longer routes like Athens and Vienna already have award space around a year out, while regional ones such as Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta only seem to have it loaded up to around 10 to 11 months in advance.

So if the Scoot flight you want is roughly a year away and isn’t showing, check back over the following few days rather than assuming it doesn’t exist, and don’t be surprised if the award seats take longer still.

Keep in mind that Scoot redemptions typically offer poor value compared to long-haul Business Class Saver awards on SIA, which is what many of our readers are aiming to secure at this early window.

Additionally, Scoot awards are non refundable, so you’d need to be very certain of your travel plans to commit nearly a year in advance.

One effective way to circumvent limited KrisFlyer award availability is to secure redemptions as soon as they’re released. Singapore Airlines often provides generous initial award space at the T-355 days mark, making this strategy ideal for those able to plan their travels well in advance.

8am Singapore Time (00:00 GMT) has always been the golden rule, and while that remains true for most cities there’s a nuance for flights departing the USA, which load later in the Singapore day – 12pm for New York and 3pm for the West Coast. Those times used to shift with American daylight saving, but for now at least they appear to hold year-round.

Scoot works differently, selling flights around a year ahead but in irregular batches with no clear daily cutover, and only loading award space that far out on selected routes anyway.

Even if your strategy is not successful, or you missed the first release of award seats, do keep checking for space as the airline often adds more as the departure date approaches.

(Cover Photo: The Points Guy)