Here’s some exciting news hitting my inbox: Starting today, members of Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program will be able to earn and redeem miles when traveling on any flight operated by Virgin America.
This is great news for me since Virgin America has a good West Coast presence based out of SFO, where the majority of my family live. But in the past I didn’t fly with Virgin America because I’m wasn’t sure what I would do with the miles. I try to make every flight count. That means I’m usually flying United or a Star Alliance partner (crediting to MileagePlus) or flying Alaska, Delta, or American (crediting to Alaska’s MileagePlan).
Although KrisFlyer seems like an odd choice to credit your flights, they do have some good redemption opportunities for U.S. domestic flights instead of using my United miles, which One Mile at a Time described previously. Also, booking directly through KrisFlyer opens much better availability for award seats on Singapore Airlines than it would if I tried to use miles from another program. Transferring Membership Rewards points from American Express was previously my only real strategy for getting KrisFlyer miles.
It appears you’ll be able to earn 100% of the flown miles for all main cabin seats on Virgin America and 150% of the flown miles for first class.
On the redemption side, one-way awards on Virgin America will start as low as 9,000 KrisFlyer miles one-way within the West Coast in the main cabin. That goes up to 20,000 miles one-way between the West Coast and the East Coast, or 16,000 miles one-way between the West Coast and Mexico. First class awards, however, look prohibitively expensive.
About Scott Mackenzie
