Two free round trip business class tickets to Tokyo on Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines A380.  The upper deck is strictly reserved for Business Class

Our son just turned 1 earlier this month!  It is amazing how fast time flies.  Looking back, the first year of being new parents was mostly a blur.  Our son has been such a joy in our lives.

After receiving 100,000 Membership Rewards points from the American Express Platinum card, we both figured that it was time to book our first international family vacation.  We decided to bring our son to visit Japan and Taiwan and choose Singapore Airlines for our long haul flights.  We like Japan because they have the most respectful people in the world and offer many peaceful gardens amongst the bustling cities.  We enjoy visiting Taiwan because my grandmother and many aunts and uncles live there.

The Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program is very open because it allows 1:1 transfer of points from all major credit card points programs.  You can transfer American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citibank ThankYou points and Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints into the KrisFlyer program.  This makes it pretty easy to quickly accumulate KrisFlyer miles for an award flight.  Singapore Airlines has the reputation for having some of the best service in the skies. 

Singapore Airlines has 3 different categories of award flights: Saver, Standard, and Full.  If you can secure a saver class award, it will cost you the least amount of miles to redeem.  When redeeming miles online, you get a 15% discount in miles.  Singapore Airlines also has very low fees for changing flight routes or dates.

My biggest gripe about the Singapore Airlines mileage program is that unused miles expire after 36 months, regardless of any new activity.  I don’t think any other frequent flyer mileage program has this lame rule.  With other airlines like United and American Airlines, any activity on the account such as earning miles or transferring miles into the account extends the expiration of miles (usually by 18 months).

Since this will be our son’s first long international flight, we wanted to make sure the flight is as comfortable as possible.  He will be around 1 year and 9 months when we make this trip, so he will not be getting his own seat on the plane.  Instead he will be a “lap baby” sharing a seat with one of us.  The flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo takes 11 hours and 45 minutes.  The return flight takes 10 hours and 10 minutes.  We really hope it will be a pleasant flight with our son. 

Singapore Airlines Suites Class

We first tried secure two seats for the amazingly comfortable Suites Class, however all saver priced awards were on waitlist. The price of saver award Suites Class would be 87,500 miles before the 15% discount (only 74,375 miles after online booking discount).  And we didn’t feel comfortable blowing 170,000 miles (144,500 miles after 15% online booking discount) per person each way on the standard awards.

We signed up for the waitlist and hopefully seats open up in the future.  Many flyers report Singapore Airlines waitlist awards seem to randomly become available, sometimes months, weeks or even days before departure of flight.  Once a waitlist flight is available, I believe you have 24 hours to book it.   In order to waitlist a Singapore Airlines award flight, you need to have enough miles in your account.

Since Suites Class was not immediately available, we booked the next best thing: Singapore Airlines Business Class. 

Business Class seating for Singapore Airlines is no joke; it is incredibly nice.  I believe they are the widest Business Class seat of any airline, wider than First Class seats of others.  These Business Class seats have fully flat beds to ensure you get comfortable shut eye on your flight.  You can even reserve your main course up to 24 hours before you depart on your flight.   

Our flight from LAX to NRT Business Saver award cost us a total 131,750 miles and $46.80 for the both of us.

Our return flight from NRT to LAX Business Standard award cost us a total of 195,500 miles 131,750 miles (we found a saver award) and JPY 12,820 ($122.46) for both of us. We are waitlisted for the Business Saver award, so if it opens up, we'll be able to save over 63,000 miles Our waitlisted flight opened up!.  I’m not sure why the website displayed the price in Japanese yen when booking but I wanted to save time so I booked the flight right away.

We choose our seats in 11D and 11F, in the forward Business Class cabin with 20 seats for both flights.

If we were to book the same round trip flights in cash, it would have cost $6,673.26!  Since we will be traveling with our son and he will be less than 2 years of age, we will be responsible for paying 10% of the full adult fare cost for his airline ticket.  This should come out to be around $333.66 [(6,673.26/2) x 0.1].  We’re waiting for his passport before booking his ticket.

Since we would probably never pay cash for Business Class flights, I won’t assume that we saved over six thousand dollars on our flight.  

The cost of two adults in economy class would comes out to be $1,693.26.  We are still saving quite a large chunk of cash by redeeming points towards free flights in Singapore Airlines Business Class. 

In summary, we spent a total of 327,250 263,500 KrisFlyer miles and $169.26 for two round trip Business Class flights!  Each one way Business Class seat cost us 65,875 miles.  

This saves us a conservative amount of $1,524 after taxes and fees. We still need to pay for our son’s flight.  We have plenty of planning to do for the rest of the trip and still need to book round trip tickets to Taiwan. 

We are excited to experience our Singapore Airlines Business Class flights as a family!