With Australian international borders opening, now’s a great time to start contemplating overseas travel in 2022 and beyond. KrisFlyer is the frequent flyer program of Singapore Airlines and a round the world (RTW) award booking is one of the best uses of KrisFlyer miles. Especially if you’re looking to visit a number of cities in one trip.
In fact, instead of just flying return to New York in Business Class, you can trek across the globe and stop in up to seven cities in Business with Star Alliance partner airlines, while saving 18,000 KrisFlyer miles! You could even do the trip in First Class for a reasonable rate. Today, we’re going to teach you how.
Of course, even if you’re not quite ready to venture abroad yet for whatever reason, all the info in our guide will still be relevant for when you’re ready to plan the trip of a lifetime.
How much does the Star Alliance RTW cost?
With a KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW Award, you can circle the globe – visiting a maximum of seven cities up to 35,000 miles over a 12-month period. The cost? Just 240,000 KrisFlyer miles in Business Class and 360,000 KrisFlyer miles in First Class.
That’s actually insanely cheap. Here’s a cost comparison of flying to New York or Europe return versus doing a RTW trip. Figures are for Business or First Class, in KrisFlyer miles (excluding tax).
| To New York return | To Europe return | RTW Award | |
|---|---|---|---|
| From Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, New Zealand | 258,000 Business 334,000 First | 232,000 Business 296,000 First | 240,000 Business 360,000 First |
| From Perth, Darwin | 242,000 Business 320,000 First | 212,000 Business 285,000 First | 240,000 Business 360,000 First |
While it may seem too good to be true, the numbers don’t lie. It costs fewer KrisFlyer miles to fly around the world in Business Class than it does to fly from Australia to New York return. For First Class, there is a moderate increase in miles needed, but it’s still amazing value.
Fuel surcharges
Since March 2017, KrisFlyer no longer imposes fuel surcharges on Singapore Airlines award flights. However, we’ll be mixing other Star Alliance airlines on a RTW booking, so some surcharges may apply. You’ll still have to pay airport taxes for each leg.
Here are some approximate taxes and surcharges examples:
- Sydney to Frankfurt in Singapore Airlines First Class: $365
- Frankfurt to New York in Lufthansa Business: $272
- Tokyo to Los Angeles in ANA Business: $41.50
- Seoul to Chicago in Asiana Business: $7
You will need to pay the combined taxes and surcharges of each individual flight when booking your round the world adventure.
Why is the Star Alliance RTW award good value?
A cash round the world ticket on Singapore Airlines and Star Alliance partners for a similar journey booked with a travel agent will start from around $16,000 per person in Business Class. That jumps to a whopping $26,000 in First Class! That’s a huge wad of cash – which you can save with KrisFlyer miles.
This RTW award is also better value than a simple award redemption with KrisFlyer miles, in terms of the distance travelled and the number of flights you can take.
An alternative miles-saving option is to maximise simple KrisFlyer redemptions by using free or additional stopovers.
What about KrisFlyer RTW redemptions in Economy?
A KrisFlyer RTW award in Economy Class costs 180,000 miles. In comparison, an Australia to New York return ticket is 120,000 miles from most cities, or 110,000 KrisFlyer miles from Perth or Darwin.
Generally, you will get the maximum value out of your points by using them for premium cabin travel.
What are the rules of the KrisFlyer RTW?
Unlike the Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward, which lets you travel in all sorts of directions, the KrisFlyer RTW award follows more traditional rules. It goes without saying that you need to find award availability on all flights.
- You must travel in a continuous eastbound or westbound direction. That means no backtracking – and the journey must begin and end in the same country. However, you are allowed an origin open-jaw in the same country, so you can depart from Melbourne and return to Sydney, for example.
- You must make only one crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and only one crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
- Your total travel distance must not exceed 35,000 miles. You are allowed a maximum of 16 segments (meaning individual flights), seven city stopovers, and you cannot purchase additional stopovers.
- You may stopover only once in each city and no more than twice in any one country.
- Surface sectors are permitted but will count as stopovers. So if you land in Paris and take the train to London and fly from there, that is counted as two stopovers – be careful.
- No change of flight/date is allowed once your journey has started.
See all the rules with the Star Alliance Round the World Award here →
Where can I fly with the Star Alliance RTW?
Of course, there are a ton of different combinations possible – depending on where you want to travel. But here are two examples that keep to the 35,000-mile maximum for your inspiration:
Example 1
Sydney – Los Angeles on United // Los Angeles – Toronto on Air Canada // Toronto – New York on Air Canada or United // New York – Rio de Janeiro on United // Rio de Janeiro – Lisbon on TAP Portugal // Lisbon – Istanbul on Turkish // Istanbul – Bangkok on Turkish Airlines // Bangkok – Sydney on THAI
Example 2
Melbourne-Singapore on Singapore Airlines // Singapore-Johannesburg on Singapore Airlines // Johannesburg-Istanbul – Johannesburg on Turkish // Istanbul-Vienna on Turkish Airlines // Vienna-Los Angeles on Austrian // Los Angeles-Honolulu on United // Honolulu-Sydney on United
You can use the excellent Great Circle Mapper tool to calculate the total distance for your trip.
Which airlines can I fly on?
You can choose from more than 1300 destinations in over 190 countries covered by the Star Alliance network, which is made up of 26 partner airlines. These include Singapore Airlines, Air Canada, ANA, SAS and United.
All of the airlines have Business Class but only six have First Class, notably Air China, Air India, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Singapore Airlines and THAI.
We’re leaving Lufthansa and SWISS out of that list because they only release First Class award seats to their partners 14 days before departure. For this award, you’ll need to book further in advance.
Also, note that Air New Zealand is notorious for having poor award availability, so don’t count on them for any long Business Class legs in your planning.
How do I book a KrisFlyer Star Alliance RTW Award?
You can’t book this award online, but you can certainly get all the research done in advance.
- Search for award seat availability. If you want to fly on Singapore Airlines, especially in First Class Suites, search on the KrisFlyer website. For all other partners, use United’s search engine.
- Write down the dates, flight number and cabin class for any award seat availability that fits your itinerary.
- Call KrisFlyer or fill in this Partner Reservation Request Form [PDF], as a RTW ticket cannot be booked online. Staff will check your routing to ensure it fits within the published rules.
We have further details in our guide on how to search for award space most efficiently.
Like other award redemptions, seats are subject to availability. There’s a chance you won’t be able to fly on the date you desire, so you need to be flexible. Because you are flying RTW, you don’t need to search for all the flights at the same time.
It is best to search one flight at a time as if it were a one-way journey, e.g. Sydney to Singapore, Singapore to Tokyo, Tokyo to Toronto.
Note that in order to redeem the award for the purpose of the RTW redemption, the availability must be classified as a Saver Award. Seat availability under Advantage Award categories cannot be booked under RTW.
Details to tell the agent when booking a KrisFlyer RTW
Have a notepad handy because when you find the available flights, you have to provide the information to the Singapore Airlines agent on the phone. Not all agents are knowledgeable about this award, so you may have to hold their hand through this process.
Speaking from personal experience, these five handy tips will save you a lot of hassle. So write down the following (taken from the example screenshot above):
- Date/s with available seats: e.g. 9 Sep 2022
- Origin and destination airports: e.g. Sydney to Singapore
- Operating airline: e.g. Singapore Airlines
- Flight number: e.g. SQ242
- Departure and arrival times: e.g. 18:05 to 00:20 the next morning
You could also try filling in the Partner Airline Reservation Request Form online, which is a PDF you enter with your desired flight details and then email or fax off. However, it only has room for six flight legs, so it’s probably not useful for most people booking a RTW trip.
How do I contact KrisFlyer?
To get in touch with KrisFlyer about a membership enquiry or flight redemption, try:
- Calling +61 2 8228 1188 from anywhere, anytime
- Sending them a direct message on Twitter or Facebook
- Submitting an online enquiry
While the Call Centre might be the quickest way to resolve your issue, try the social media channels if the line is busy. During this coronavirus pandemic, which is heavily affecting Singapore Airlines, it may not be possible to book your RTW trip in a timely manner.
How do I earn KrisFlyer miles?
The great news for Aussies? KrisFlyer miles can be earned relatively easily, as it is a transfer partner of several credit cards including American Express Membership Rewards.
Transferring Velocity Points to KrisFlyer miles
Many Virgin Australia Velocity readers asked us how they can use their Velocity Points to make a similar round the world award redemption. The answer is not quite.
Velocity doesn’t have its own round the world award. But later in 2022, we expect you can once again transfer your Velocity points to KrisFlyer miles. Unfortunately, this transfer process is currently suspended.
Previously, you could transfer 372,000 Velocity Points to fly Business Class or 558,000 to fly First Class round the world, booked through Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer. Let’s hope that this transfer opportunity will be opened up soon.
Summing up
The KrisFlyer Star Alliance round the world award represents great value compared to both cash tickets and simple one-way or return routings. In some cases, it’s even cheaper than a simple return ticket from Australia to New York!
You will need to put in quite a bit of work to get this plan off the ground. Collect enough miles for the number of people travelling, find the right award seat availability on the dates you want, then call up Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer to book the journey one leg at a time.
But ultimately, it’s all worth it. Go ahead and relax during your extended trip, knowing you’ve successfully pulled off one of the hardest awards to book in the frequent flyer world.
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I have been in the process of trying to book a RTW with Singapore for over a week and here is what I’ve encountered:
– The phone number in the article doesn’t work at all.
– No US SA offices are answering phone calls.
– The “Reservations” number they give is bad.
– The only number that works is the call center – and it could take hours before someone answers. The person who answers can never help you directly. They promise you an expedited call back which never comes. They promise that they will call you personally the next day – they do not.
– There are *very limited* Star Alliance flights available through SA. Using the United Mileage search isn’t helpful because they will only allow you to add flights available on SA’s website – and trying to book around the world flights six months out from now means availability is almost nothing.
At this point, sending in the online form was the fastest b/c it got me a temporary reservation, but I haven’t been given any way to pay with my miles. I have asked numerous times for confirmation I can pay with 240,000 miles for business class and no one can give it to me.
I will follow up in a few days and let you know if this was a success or bust.
I think next time I will spend the extra points and holiday for a longer period of time in the one location! Far more convenient and much less hassle that’s for sure.
It has taken me several weeks to wait for flights to become available, to navigate the partner airlines and address the multitude of barriers thrown up at every point.
After much pulling of hair from my head I have finally settled on a suitable itinerary (version 32 from my original), and reached out today to start the booking process.
(I thought this would be the easy bit!)
Upon calling I am continually prompted to enter my PIN number , which I am happy to do, however without the ability to input my membership number, I gave up after about twenty tries.
I managed to finally get through on an international number, after thirty minutes I gave up as the lady trying to assist me was struggling too much.
I was advised to send everything through by email via the feedback page and hopefully they will call me in hour days.
Hopefully the flights I have waited for are still available etc etc.
Who else wishes for the days where you could call someone and get them to assist?
Press #36 then # 945 if you agree
Thanks
Has anybody actually made this thing work? I can’t seem to find (looking 330 days out) any way to cross the Pacific that doesn’t create a dogleg from the Australian east coast (bne for what it’s worth) because Japan is as far east as international airports in Asia go – and its still west of Au. There are no Star Alliance airlines flying trans-Pacific with any business saver seats ever offered other than via Asia so it just can’t be done as far as I can tell. Is this something that has only ever worked when the agent makes a mistake and allows a dogleg? I’ve been able to find availability travelling west to get to Europe various ways – and on to North America. But leaving North America to get back to Australia seems impossible?
The Star Alliance RTW trip finder and United are useless. The only way to try and determine availability is via the Singapore Airlines site using the award flights search option
You can only choose the ‘Saver’ option – which is almost always wait-listed for upwards of a year moving foward
Availability is practically non-existent for popular sectors for the next year. e.g. the first available flight from Australia to the US in the Saver option is April 2019 !
The only partner airline that has come up in any of the hundreds of searches I’ve done is Turkish Airlines from Rome to Singapore.
So, we wanted to do Sydney to New York, New York to Rome, Rome to Singapore and Singapore to Sydney. Sounds simple ? Not possible within the next year, even after that we cannot get dates that will work. So, we’ve given up and will book a combination of individual reward flights.
I’m planning mine 12 months from now.
U have to go ALL Singapore Airlines segments.
Yep – u basically have to book ONE year in advance. Free is usually means the money – they don’t tell u about the time needed to book it – LOL.
We’ve called up Singapore Airlines and have run into a couple of issues with finding availability despite seeing options via either Singapore Airlines or United Search tools, i.e. the agents can’t see the availability we can see on those sites.
We are also challenged in that we are looking to complete trip from Oct to January upcoming, which means that some flights will be tight on availability.
Do you have any suggestions for:
1) Searching for availability such that it lines up with what the agents will see in their system and
2) whether it makes sense to reserve seats in economy where no business rewards available at the start and then check at a later stage whether business availability opens up?
Thanks a lot in advance and look forward to hearing from you
Knowing that First is probably the same as Australian Business, do they allow First on this sector or are you back to Economy
Thanks!
I can probably take off for only 30 days or so. Is that realistic to get RTW scheduling for ?
Since the max is 7 cities (and not countries), if I land in Paris and wanted to tour most of Europe, are you saying I should take the next segment to start from Paris ?
Which direction is easier to book for ? Going east or west ?
Thanks ahead for your answers.
It seems to me, if your entire journey (40-50 days) must all be booked at once, that RTW could never be successfully booked. The only way success can happen, as I see it, is establish start date; when that becomes available – book it; then for flight #2, when that date rolls around, book it; and so on. If that is not possible, how on earth can a RTW ever be booked?
It would be fascinating to hear from anyone with any successful experience. For what it is worth, I was trying business class RTW:
San Francisco
Montreal
Frankfurt
Dehli
Bangkok
Auckland
Honolulu
San Francisco
And, I found appealing availability, if all flights happen on the same day. But, since I actually wanted to visit these places, the journey is strung out and I have not learned how to accomplish that.
1. I like to hear an update for your situation.
2. I wonder if we should all start up our own google group !
CBR-SIN-LHR,EDI-IST-JFK-BOG-LIM-SJO-CUN,LAX-HND-ICN-SYD.
backtracking from LHR-EDI, EDI-IST. ICN-SYD is technically backtracking too.
amazing value for money overall. Only thing SIA was concerned about was the total mileage.
Itinerary is:
MEL-SIN-CMB
CMB-SIN-IST (agent said this is backtracking when we called back but another agent had already approved the itinerary when we called the day before?!?)
IST-LIS
LIS-DSS
DSS-IAD-YYZ
YYZ-SFO
SFO-HNL
HNL-ICN-SIN-MEL (waiting for flight to open for booking)
We were able to identify seats in business except for IAD-YYZ and SFO-HNL, trip will be near end of year so understandable but will continue to look for availability to open up.
Really somewhat maddening process but hope we get there in the end.
Just wondering if it would be possible to book a seat in J as part of an F RTW ticket? Also, if this was done with Lufthansa or SWISS, would it be possible to later upgrade this back to F? Cheers.
Thanks.
Thanks for the article. I do have a question about the routing. Say you are in Perth and fly out west to Singapore and onto Europe and then on the way back from the US you go to Tokyo, are you able to go from Tokyo to Singapore and then back to Perth? As the East/West doesn’t quite make sense in that scenario. But (correct me if i’m wrong) the only star alliance flights that leave/arrive in Perth is Singapore, Bangkok, Johannesburg and a New Zealand city (but not counted as you said it is hard to get availability). And even if you choose to fly out from Perth to Singapore and go West, on the way back say you went from Tokyo to Bangkok and Bangkok to Perth, both Singapore and Bangkok are West of Perth and the routing is not strictly in a West direction.
Also is there any limit with layovers as opposed to stopovers?
Thanks again!
I’ve never booked a flight from Perth so I don’t have that experience, and you would have to double check with Singapore on that. As far as I can tell, your first itinerary is in the one direction and crosses the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean once and flying back, Tokyo-Singapore-Perth should not be a problem.
The Eastbound or westbound scenario doesn’t mean it is east/west of your home city, it just means the direction you are flying in, imagine it is like a one-way street, you choose the direction at the start, left or right, but after you start pick the direction, you have to go in that one-way direction and in a circle to return to your starting position.
As long as a layover is 23 hours and 59 minutes, it would not be counted as a stopover.
In my experience booking from BNE, you wouldn’t be able to fly west from SIN to Europe after having flown east from PER-SIN. This was very strictly imposed on me, but I was never able to get to the bottom of whether this was an accurate interpretation of the ‘continuous west/eastbound direction’ rule. It seems unnecessarily strict and over-zealous. But the only way to know for sure is to call them. See what they say. Either way, on the whole, I still think the 240,000 business class RTW award is great value. It just requires very very careful planning.
Cheers
Geoff B.
In my experience with SQ, their rules are very strict and there is no grey area. This is when the Qantas RTW comes in handy because it is more flexible, plus you can make changes after the journey has commenced.
Certainly there are trade offs, you can be more flexible by booking one-way award and limiting number of cities you can visit or use the RTW and must play within the routing rules.
For an extra 4,000 KF miles you have decide whether its worth it or not.
The agent even suggested Sydney-Singapore-Tokyo-New York-London-Singapore-Sydney was possible.
I will call SQ and double check again.
SQ agent said it was possible “zig zag” within the same continent to an extent. I’ll request another booking again and see what they said.
After being waitlisted with SQ for NYC return and with the removing of 15% discount (now 230k pts), it was only wise to try RTW-so i thought.
Never did I know that how many rules and how little availabilities were there for the places I wanted to visit and the airlines I deemed ok to fly with. e.g. I tried SQ, LH, UA, CA, none were available. I tried east to west and reverse directions, but i always hit road block here and there.
After spending weeks of planning, hours (each time) talking with SQ call centre (they call you back), I finally got my route:
Au east coast to Thailand to Germany to NYC to Taiwan back to AU east coast with TG, LX (LH economy), BR & SQ in business, surcharges and taxes $830aud.
BUT i m visiting Europe and NYC in not-so-interesting November. I could postpone it to April/May for a better season. But think of the process, I’d be rather experiencing boring November than going through it again…
My take aways: United site definitely helped heaps (probably the only good thing about them), along with star alliance for reference only.
Seats do go quickly for sure, so once you know what to book, get the miles and money ready. Of course if you are not picky about route and airlines, and dates are flexible – unlike me, you will find it much easier to fly RTW. SQ guys were brilliant! That you call it service!
If you want the Throne seat on LX, they charge you 🙂 You can always sit next to them and stare at them and whoever sit in there…the whole trip.
I’m in the midst of planning an RTW and the dates and flights aren’t exactly my first choices. But for 4,000 miles extra, its hard to beat.
If i were to book one-way for each of these tickets, even utilising the stopover $100 price, this would cost me around 400,000 points.
There are restrictions with the RTW award and not something that works for everyone.
Sometimes you will not get seats on the most direct route and might have reroute and fly via a different city on a different airline.
If you are travelling for 12 months, you are probably better off booking one-way awards because normally airlines don’t open their award calendar beyond 11 months from today.
And Krisflyer does not allow changes to an itinerary once your journey has started.
This guide isn’t the answer for everyone because there are pros and cons to one-way awards vs RTW.
Flexibility, point to point, and more points vs. certain restrictions, more cities, less points.
We have to work out the trade offs.
I’ve booked RTW before and like any award seat, you need to be flexible.
Right now I’m booking my own rtw and I’ve had to leave a few days before my desired date, and then I’ve had to stay in a few cities a few days longer/shorter because of availability.