Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. A few weeks ago, I learned about all the cool things you can do with Singapore Airlines miles (@ the SF Travel Hackers Meetup) and I am tempted to book my first award flight using Singapore Airlines miles. I also heard that point transfers to Singapore Airlines were not instant, so I decided to run a few tests to see how long each transferable points program took to post to Singapore Airlines.
If you were to look at the below screenshot from my Singapore Airlines account, it would look like all the transfers took the same amount of time. Not true. The dates listed below are the dates that I initiated the transfer, not the actual dates when the miles posted. I will go into more detail in the post, but here is the summary of transfer times:
- Chase Ultimate Rewards Points: within 12 hours
- AMEX Membership Rewards Points: within 24 hours
- Citi Thank You Points: within 24 hours
- SPG Starpoints: 6 days
Here is the methodology that I used to perform my test:
- I opened a brand new Singapore Airlines account on July 7 (1 day prior to running my test).
- Between 6:41am and 6:47am on July 8, I transferred points from Chase, Citi, AMEX, and SPG to Singapore Airlines.
- I transferred different amounts of points from each program to make sure I could tell which miles came from which program (that turned out to be unnecessary, since each transaction shows where the points came from).
- Lastly, I would check my Singapore Airlines account balance twice a day (between 6-7am PT and between 7-8pm PT).
Here are the transfer times, based on my twice daily Singapore Airlines account balance checks:
- Chase Ultimate Rewards Points: within 12 hours
- AMEX Membership Rewards Points: within 24 hours
- Citi Thank You Points: within 24 hours
- SPG Starpoints: 6 days
Since I did not check every hour, I cannot give you a more exact number, but in my test, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points transferred the quickest, while SPG Starpoints took roughly 6 times as long. I will now go through the transfer process for each transferable points program.
Transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
After logging into your Chase Ultimate Rewards account (Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Bold/Plus required), go to travel partners and find Singapore Airlines.
Enter the number of Chase Ultimate Rewards Points you want to transfer to Singapore Airlines, review the transfer, and click Submit. You will get a confirmation email from Chase within a few minutes of the transfer and your Singapore Airlines miles should post within 12 hours.
AMEX Membership Rewards Points
After logging into your AMEX Membership Rewards account (AMEX Membership Rewards earning card required), click the Travel tab, then click Transfer Points. Find Singapore Airlines from the airline partners. Enter the number of points you want to transfer, enter your AMEX card numbers, and click Confirm Transfer. You will get a confirmation email from AMEX within a few minutes of the transfer and your Singapore Airlines miles should post within 24 hours.
Transfer from Citi Thank You Points
After logging into your Citi Thank You account (Citi® ThankYou® Premier Card or Citi Prestige® required), click the Shop tab, then click Points Transfer. Find Singapore Airlines and click Transfer Now.
Enter the number of points you want to transfer, enter your Singapore Airlines account info, and click Confirm Transfer. You will get a confirmation email from Citi within a few minutes of the transfer and your Singapore Airlines miles should post within 24 hours.
SPG Starpoints
Last but not least, log into your SPG account and click Redeem Starpoints. Scroll down until you see Transfer Air Miles and click Transfer Starpoints to Air Miles.
Select Singapore Airlines from the drop down menu, enter the number of SPG Starpoints you want to transfer, review the transfer, and click Complete Transfer. You will get a confirmation email from SPG within a few minutes of the transfer and your Singapore Airlines miles should post within 6 days (hopefully sooner).
If I were to redo this test, I would transfer Chase/Citi/AMEX points early in the morning and then refresh my account every hour. I’m not sure if there is a specific time each day that those points programs process Singapore Airlines transfers or if it takes a certain number of hours to process each request. I want to point out that the SPG transfer did take 6 days. I checked my Singapore Airlines account twice a day for nearly a week and did not see the points from SPG for 6 days. I transferred the points Tuesday morning, which might be the wrong day of the week for SPG points transfers. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
Would enjoy a post on the cool things you can do with Singapore miles.
Everything you want to know about Singapore Airlines miles/routes can be found here: http://travelisfree.com/2014/08/06/best-use-of-singapore-airlines-krisflyer-miles/
What is transfer rate and how many points for round trip from SF to Singapore?
From Travel is Free: “A oneway from USA westcoast to SIN would be 35k/80k/107.5k” using Singapore Airlines miles (before the 15% discount).
Last week I used Singapore Krisflyer miles to book business class on a United premium services flight from New York to Los Angeles (plus a connecting flight from LA home to San Diego). I had to call to book it, but It was a quick process. There were no extra charges and it only cost a total of 20,000 Krisflyer miles, while it would have cost 25,000 miles if I’d booked it with United. If I have to cancel, they’ll only charge $30 to redeposit my miles, compared to $200 on United.
That sounds like such a great deal with miles. I don’t think I will be using many more United miles in the near future.
Great post Grant. Thank you
Thank you Rick, I hope it helps with planning transfers to Singapore Airlines. Have a great weekend.
I believe SPG seems slower b/c they have scheduled sweeps…I have no idea what the schedule is, but I think it’s possible to get lucky and have a transfer take less than 6 days.
That is what I think too. I would like to test SPG transfer a few more times to see if there is a certain day of the week when transfers are processed.
Always the informer! I’m stocking up my UR & MR points for SE Asia next year. I’m trying to understand who to transfer my points to so I can maximize the results. Would you have some info to share on this? ~thanks
There are so many airlines that fly to/through Asia, so many frequent flyer programs, and a few transferable points programs. The possibility are endless. I would start by seeing which airlines fly from where you live to where you want to go. Then see which programs charge the fewest amount of miles and taxes/fees. Then make the transfer to those programs.
Thanks! I live 8 miles from LAX. Guess I have lots of options! Also, wouldn’t care too much if I had to fly from SFO.
You are lucky you live so close to LAX :)
Hi Grant,
Thanks for this informative post and the link to travelisfree above.
Can you please write or share a bit of what did you learn at the SF travel hacker meetup about Singapore Airlines for SFO based frequent flyers? It would be useful for us SF or bay area frequent flyers who missed the meetup. Thanks in advance!
Hi Jason, I don’t remember everything about Singapore Airlines that was mentioned at the SF Travel Hackers Meetup, other than the slightly reduced prices for traveling to Asia from the west coast. Everything I remember from the meeting is summarized in the Travel Is Free post. Domestic business and first class is slightly cheaper with Singapore Airlines miles and the price to Hawaii is cheaper with Singapore Airlines miles (still more expensive than British Airways, but now you can travel on United to Hawaii).
Thanks Grant, appreciate the insight.
Grant can you share how you plan on using your Singapore Krisflyer Miles?
I don’t have any immediate plans in mind, but you can use 25,000 Singapore Airlines miles to go from the US to Europe in economy. That is a 5,000 mile discount compared to United Airlines. Singapore Airlines also partners with Virgin America/Atlantic/Australia, so I might fly on Virgin America somewhere (they have a hub at SFO) or down to Australia on Virgin Australia.
That’s a good redemption from US to Europe, how about 20,000 AA miles for one way from US to Europe on off peak ?
That works too, but there are much more options on Star Alliance than One World to Europe.
i have 15798 SPG points without the card and the points expire in NOV 2015. I don’t know where to transfer to . I don’t have any starwood hotel stays for at least next 6 months.
Transfer to Singapore seems poor value and hate that Singapore miles EXPIRE in 36 months.
Any thoughts and ideas?
Thanks
You just need 1 transaction in your SPG account to reset the expiration date. You can transfer as few as 1,500 SPG points to airlines and that will reset the expiration date. iS that an option for you?
I will that of think. What about the 5k bonus you get for transferring 20K star points? I just need about 4k SPG points to make it 20k? I think it is too expensive to buy 4k SPG points
That is also an option, but since you can get Singapore Airlines miles from so many different places, I would probably hold on to my SPG points.
Thanks for the article. Good timing for me, I am just looking at transferring points to Singapore from Thank You. I think some of the info at travelisfree.com about Singapore Airlines is not up-to-date. So I think a new article would be helpful.
Hmm, well I am a Singapore Airlines noob, so I don’t think I know enough to write about Singapore Airlines award charts.
Nice post Grant! I want to try Singapore Airlines on a long haul and splurge on their 1st class product. I don’t recall any transfer bonuses to Krisflyer from any cards -but you’d know better than me. I have points on all the cards noted above. Do any points ever transfer better than 1-1 into Krisflyer (as far as you know?). Thanks!
If you do SPG to Singapore Airlines, you can get the standard 20,000:25,000 transfer. Citi and Chase will probably never have transfer bonuses. There is a chance that AMEX MR will have some transfer bonus.
Thanks Grant! I didn’t know this. SPG are the best (but hard to come by). Thanks again!
Just to add some data point, I initiated some transfer yesterday at 3:30pm, by 11pm the Chase points transferred already in my Krisflyer account, and this morning at 8am, the Amex MR transfer was in there too. Only the Thankyou points still not there. So the transfer time seems shorter than you indicated.
Thank you for the data points, Sharon. If I refreshed my Singapore Airlines account every hour after making the transfer, I would have had more accurate transfer times.
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