Happy Friday Reader!
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So last week I talked about my Switzerland trip, but I left out my return flight from Europe to the U.S. because it wasn't a "good" redemption, and I wanted to talk about it because there's a lot of tangents.
I originally booked Frankfurt (FRA) to JFK for business class with Singapore Airlines as a saver fare for 89,000 Singapore Airlines miles each and ~$150 in taxes and fees, which is not terrible to begin with, but not much to brag about.
The cheapest way to book these same flights on Singapore Airlines would cost 60k one way with Air Canada miles or 50k with ANA miles. But this availability tends to be harder to find far in advance.
The main reason I used Singapore miles though was because I had miles already stuck in that account from a previous trip I booked and canceled over a year ago. And I needed to burn these because they expire after 3 years without a way of extending them.
But here's where things turn sideways. I ended up having to change dates because we decided to extend our trip, but there were no more saver fares. From there, the price jumps to 105,000 miles each, so I transferred 32,000 more Capital One points to Singapore Airlines to change our date.
That one stung. 100k+ is typically not the goal for a business class flight, especially for a shorter one from Europe to the East coast. An easy way to get a feel for an upper limit on how many points to pay is to take the hours of flight time and multiply it by 10. This flight is 8.5 hours, so 85k is a good upper limit for this flight, and now I'm over it.
You win some and you lose some, I still get to fly business class, more points will come and more flights will be flown at better deals. Plus it evens out with the 45k business class flight I scored on the way in. That's what I told myself and moved on.
Fast forward to ~30 days before the flight, I decide to take a look to see if there's first class award availability (I already sunk 100k+, why not keep going). And sure enough, Singapore steadily releases more first class awards somewhere in that 2-4 week period before departure IF there's availability to release at all.
The best part is that first class saver awards on this route cost 106.5k each one way, just 1.5k more, so I was able to change our flights to first class for just 3k and change this story from that one time I spent a little too much on business class, to the story where I flew my first first class flight.
Granted, this isn't the "best" first class cabin that Singapore has to offer. The FRA-JFK route we flew was flying their Boeing 777-300ER, not their extra cool suites found on their A380 planes, but I'm not one to complain.
Around the same time I noticed the first class availability, I also noticed that business class award availability had opened up via Air Canada. I considered canceling our flights and rebooking with Air Canada miles, but then I would be stuck with a huge sum of Singapore miles that would still expire soon. So I stuck with the Singapore first class upgrade instead.
So moral of the story? Things will work out! It's not that serious, and as your flight date gets closer, take a look to see if there's a change in award availability for you to take advantage of.
P.S. I got a question regarding last week's newsletter asking why I didn't reimburse my travel expenses from Capital One or my Chase cards. And truthfully, the only reason I didn't was because we had enough money to cover it because we had been saving up for a long time. If we got to the point where it felt like the cash from the points would be relieving, then I would've reimbursed myself.
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