It’s a sad day when a frequent traveler has to cancel a Singapore Air First Class award. That is exactly the situation I find myself in this weekend.
I was amazed by the Singapore Air Business Class product when I flew them last month. I can only imagine First Class is even better.
So needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to book two Singapore Air tickets using United miles during the Singapore Air First Class booking frenzy earlier this year. I transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points to top off my United Account and booked two First Class awards to the Maldives for 140,000 each.
We also booked a 6 night stay at the Park Hyatt Maldives. We already cancelled this award reservation and received a full refund of our Hyatt Golf Passport points.
In the end, the timing of the trip was the issue and we now have to cancel the entire trip.
Strategy To Cancel And Redeposit Miles
Since I have no United elite status, I’ll incur a fee to get the 280,000 United miles redeposited back into my account.
Instead, my plan is to change my ticket to an award that requires fewer miles, like a 5,000 mile Hawaii intra-island award. Apparently United will refund the difference in both miles and taxes paid. So if all goes as planned, I’ll receive about 270,000 United miles and about $200 back in taxes and fees. But I haven’t tried this approach yet so I can’t say for sure if it will work.
So what do you think about cancelling the Singapore Air award and mile redeposit strategy?
I’ll report back on the results in a week or two once I can sit down and cancel the award.
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The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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Without status you still have to pay the fee to change the ticket because your origin and destination will change. Figure out if the difference is important enough to not go and outright cancel it.
just wait for a equipment swap/schedule change and the airline will waive the redeposit fees
Agree with Jamison. Wait until a change in schedule happens. If not, then change the date to the last possible time you can (1 year from when you booked it). Good chance some schedule change will happen by then and you can cancel/redeposit miles at that point for free. However, this is not a good approach if you actually need those miles to book another trip.
Carrier change also incurs a fee. The intra-Hawaii awards are a bad redemption because the flights are so cheap.
@Deirdre – Intra-Hawaii awards are awesome! 5,000 AA miles for a one way island hopper.. thats hot
If you have not done a status match/challenge with United or Continental in the last 5 years and have the status with another airline to match to UA Platinum, you could request the match and then cancel without a fee during the 90 day challenge period while you are a Plat. Of course, this would mean that you could not do another UA match/challenge for another 5 years if you had that in mind for the future.
Why in God’s name would you do a status challenge to save a few dollars on a change fee?
Aww rats, I was vicariously looking forward to that awesome trip. Let us know how it all works out in the end.
I’ve done this, and it works. I wrote about it a few weeks ago: http://milevalue.com/save-100-or-more-when-cancelling-a-united-award/
Hi MileValue – Thanks for pointing me to your post. Looks like it should work and I’ll only come out of pocket about~$50 bucks a ticket. I also remember United used to run a plane between STT and SJU at a low mileage requirement. May look into that as well as it will be easier for me to use that flight.
Hi Shorty – Keep an eye out for my upcoming SQ J trip report from ICN to SIN.