Annoying: You Now Need Miles in Your KrisFlyer Account to View Award Space

Singapore Airlines has quietly started blocking award searches for KrisFlyer accounts with fewer than 1,000 miles. If you attempt this, you'll be met with an "Unable to proceed" message — transfer some miles to your KrisFlyer account, and this goes away. The change seems to be rolling out slowly, with only some accounts affected so far.

To be clear, you don't need enough miles to book the award you're actually searching for. A 1,000-mile balance unlocks searches for anything, including partner award tickets.

Thankfully, you can transfer points from Amex, Capital One, Chase, and Citi to KrisFlyer, so it's relatively easy to get the miles you need to unlock searches.

Andrew's Take

This move seems like an anti-scraper measure, but it's a particularly annoying change since KrisFlyer miles expire after 36 months no matter how active your account is. On the bright side, it's just 1,000 miles which you can transfer in from most major transferable points programs. Singapore Airlines is one of my favorite airlines and I've already moved the 1,000 points over.