Introduction
While next November seems like a long way off, I’ve been busy planning our honeymoon to make sure we get the flights and hotels we want. So far I’ve booked three nights at the Conrad Maldives. Next, I booked two Singapore Suites from Singapore to Frankfurt to New York. It’s sad to say but I’m really excited for my honeymoon to be over just so I can experience Singapore Suites!
Original Plans for Our Flight Home
The last leg of our honeymoon is in the Maldives, so I was originally planning on transferring American Express points to Aeroplan. Our options to get home from Male weren’t great. We would have three stops with travel ranging from 24 to 36 hours. One such itinerary was Male to Delhi on Air India, Delhi to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, and Istanbul to Boston on Turkish Airlines.
When I conceived this plan, business class availability looked great and there were several other route options (some with only two stops!). However, when it was time to book, I could only find mixed cabin itineraries with the longest legs in coach! Time for a new plan…
Rearranging Our Itinerary
Since we would be flying to the Maldives from Singapore, I decided why not make that a round trip flight? Instead of spending three nights in Singapore in a row, we could do two nights before the Maldives and one night after. And since we’ll be in Singapore before heading back to the States, why not fulfill a churning dream of mine…Singapore Suites!
I should note, Singapore Suites is not hard to book using miles, but booking a Saver ticket sure is! We had zero flexibility with our flight home since we didn’t want to cut our honeymoon short and also couldn’t extend into the next week since my fiancé is still finishing his medical training and his schedule is not very flexible.
You Can’t Take It With You…
Since we needed to book SIN to FRA to JFK on a Saturday, our chances of getting a Saver seat were zero. We made the conscious decision to spend an assload of points on this. Once I initiated the transfer from Chase and Amex, there was no looking back.
I’m sure many of you will look at this and think, how wasteful! You could have gone on so many other vacations with that amount of miles. You are correct. But you can’t take it with you and I can always earn more points and miles. I’m so excited to fly Singapore Suites that I had no ragrets booking it.
I should also note that Standard Awards on Singapore come with a free stopover. However, we won’t be taking advantage of a stopover in Frankfurt since we need to get back for work on Monday. I know it’s wasteful but eh, whatta ya gonna do?
Booking Singapore Suites
Transferring Points to KrisFlyer
To book Singapore Suites from Singapore to JFK, I needed 450,000 KrisFlyer miles. KrisFlyer miles are easy to get since you can transfer points from Chase, American Express, Starwood, and Citi. I transferred 255,000 Amex points and 195,000 Chase points. The Amex transfer took about 6 hours. I transferred the Chase points late on a Friday and the points arrived the next evening.
Earning the Points to Transfer
Taking a step back here, I earned all of these points in a one year period. I’d started hoarding points about 6 months before we even got engaged because I knew we’d need to be ready to book a honeymoon someday! I earned the Amex points over the past year with 100,000 from Amex Platinum, 50,000 from Amex PRG, 25,000 from the Green card, 20,000 from Blue for Business Plus, 30,000 by keeping my Platinum open, and the rest from Amex offers and spending.
135,000 Chase points came from my fiancé opening the Chase Ink Preferred and Chase Sapphire Preferred while the rest were from spending and referring my sister to both of those cards.
Booking Our Singapore Suite Tickets!
You can use miles to book Singapore Airlines tickets 356 days out. While the calendar might not allow you to select this date, search the itinerary with the date closest to your actual departure date and click the “Next Day” button. New flights are loaded at 7:00pm EST, so you can hit “Next Day” a second time to access the correct date.
For example, 356 days from January 6, 2018 is December 28, 2018. The calendar will only let me select December 26, 2018. I can hit the “Next Day” button to advance to December 27, 2018. At 7:00pm EST, I can hit “Next Day” again to access December 28, 2018 seats.
While I knew I wouldn’t be competing for a Saver ticket, I still wanted to book the moment it was released to make sure we got two middle seats. There are only two sets of middle seats, and I really needed that double bed! After booking the tickets, I checked the seat map and saw the other two middle seats were also booked. Looks like we may meet some fellow churners on this flight!
Final Thoughts
At the time of booking, this flight for two people was worth $17,353.86. Booking it cost us 450,000 miles and $201.73, earning a redemption value of 3.8 cents per point. I guess that’s the price to pay for flying over 20 hours of flying with a double bed!
Honeymoon Stats
Points spent: 735,000
Out-of-pocket cost: $1,321.73
Total value: $21,749.86
