Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  By the time you read this post, I will be flying down to La Paz, Bolivia for the start of my Central / South America trip.  A few weeks ago, I booked a flight for my brother to Maui, Hawaii.  The flight is in mid April and the cost of the ticket was kind of pricey ($500+), but luckily I found United Airlines award space for the flights he wanted.  Unfortunately, United Airlines charges 45,000 miles + $11.20 in taxes/fees for a roundtrip flight in economy.  Luckily, Singapore Airlines only charges 35,000 miles for the same roundtrip flight in economy to Hawaii.  In this post, I will show you how I easily booked an award ticket for my brother using Singapore Airlines miles and how adding him as a redemption nominee made the process even easier.

Since I didn’t have 35,000 Singapore Airlines miles in my account, I transferred 25,000 Citi Thank You Points (to empty my Citi Thank You Point balance) and then I transferred 10,000 American Express Membership Reward Points.  I could have transferred Chase Ultimate Reward Points, but I wanted to save those points for another award.  The Singapore Airlines miles posted ~24 hours later (I checked every few hours), which is in line with the data from this post: Transfer Times to Singapore Airlines from Chase Ultimate Rewards, AMEX Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points, and SPG Starpoints.

I thought I could book this award ticket online, but Singapore Airlines’s website is slowly rolling out online partner bookings, but their website does not support this United award ticket (as of 12/24/2017), so I had to call Singapore Airlines.  The booking process was very similar to My First Experience Booking an Award Ticket with Singapore Airlines Miles (Flying on United Airlines).

On the Singapore Airlines redemption page, you can see the various award charts for Singapore Airlines and their  airline partners.

At the bottom of that page, there is a link to Add or Change Redemption Nominees (aka book award tickets for other people).

When you book an award ticket for someone else using your Singapore Airlines miles, you can dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend on the phone with the Singapore Airlines phone rep, since you are not spelling out the person’s name, date of birth and passport information one character at a time.  To add a new redemption nominee, click the + Add Nominee button.  You can have up to 5 redemption nominees per Singapore Airlines account.  I’m not sure what the flat fee is if you need to remove/replace a redemption nominee.  Does anyone know?

Filling out the redemption nominee form is pretty simple and straightforward.  Then check the box and click the Submit button.

After you submit the redemption nominee form, you will receive an automated confirmation email.  You can then call Singapore Airlines and book an award ticket for your redemption nominee.

After a short call to Singapore Airlines, the award ticket was booked for 35,000 Singapore Airlines miles and ~$11.20 in taxes/fees (charged in Singaporean Dollars).

The most time consuming part of the whole process (assuming you can find award space quickly) is waiting for the Singapore Airlines miles to transfer from Citi, Chase, AMEX, or SPG.  The rest of the booking process is very easy.  The Singapore Airlines reps are very knowledgeable (probably more so than US airline phone reps), friendlier (much friendly than most US airline phone reps) and speak very good English (equivalent to US airline phone reps).  If you have any questions about the redemption nominee process or booking an award ticket using Singapore Airlines miles, please leave a comment below.  Have a great weekend everyone!