KrisFlyer’s dynamically-priced Access awards are live, and while they can be ridiculously expensive, they can also be a good deal in certain circumstances!

When Singapore Airlines announced a devaluation of its KrisFlyer award charts effective 1 November 2025, it also introduced a new award type called **Access, **which would be dynamically priced based on factors like seat demand and seasonality.

This marks KrisFlyer’s first foray into dynamic pricing territory, which, as I shared in a recent CNA commentary, rarely ends well for members.

✈️ Access Awards
With Access redemption, you will have an added option to use your KrisFlyer miles to pay and secure confirmed Singapore Airlines flight tickets immediately on your preferred flights as long as there are available seats. The number of miles required for seat confirmation will differ based on the demand for seats and may vary throughout the year. *Seats available for Access redemption are over and above the seats available for award flights. With the new Access redemption option, you will be able to use your miles to secure available seats on your preferred flights even if award seats are fully redeemed. * -Singapore Airlines

At the same time, however, I didn’t want to prejudge the matter until we’d seen the actual pricing. Well, Access awards went live today, and on the whole it’s pretty much what I expected: more costly than Advantage, but nowhere near as terrible as Cash + Miles.

In general, what I’m seeing is that compared to Advantage awards, the cheapest Access award costs:

• First Class: 80% more
• Business Class: 25% more
• Premium Economy Class: 30% more
• Economy Class: 30% more

Let me put it this way: if you’re someone who already finds Advantage pricing hard to stomach, then Access awards will be all but irrelevant. However, if you have more miles than you can spend, then Access awards could offer a viable alternative during peak periods, or when you need instant confirmation without dealing with the uncertainty of the waitlist.

And — whisper it quietly — it could even be good value in certain circumstances!

Shortly after publishing this article, the MileLion community was able to piece together the unpublished KrisFlyer Access award chart, so be sure to read the following article too.

Revealed: The “secret” KrisFlyer Access award chart

What are Access awards?

Access awards are more expensive than Advantage, but also offer better availability

Access awards are a new type of KrisFlyer award that will exist alongside Saver and Advantage awards (and Promo awards, during Spontaneous Escapes).

These are only available for flights operated by Singapore Airlines, and excludes Scoot or other partners.

Unlike Saver and Advantage, Access awards are not priced according to an award chart. Instead, the mileage requirement will depend on several factors:

1. Seat availability
2. Route
3. Time of year
4. Cabin

This is basically** dynamic pricing. **When the cash price of a ticket increases, so too will the cost of an Access award. When the cash price decreases, Access awards will cost less— though there will presumably be some kind of floor price that prevents it from dropping below existing Advantage levels.

Saver & Advantage Access Pricing Fixed, based on award chart Dynamic Availability Limited inventory Greater availability Waitlist Available Not available Earn Miles? No Upgrade with Miles? No Taxes and Surcharges Paid in cash

Since Access awards draw from commercial seat availability, they will naturally be more abundant than Saver or Advantage awards. They will also be available for immediate confirmation, with no waitlisting required (or even possible).

However, just like traditional Saver and Advantage awards:

• Access awards do not earn KrisFlyer miles, Elite miles or PPS Value
• Access awards cannot be further upgraded with miles or cash, or the Advance Upgrade vouchers offered under the KrisFlyer Milestone Rewards and PPS Rewards programmes
• Taxes and fees must be paid in cash

The fare conditions for Access awards will basically follow that of Advantage awards.

Saver Access & Advantage Free Stopovers* RT: 1 / OW: 0 RT: 2 / OW: 1 Cancellation US$75 US$50 Date changes US$25 Free Route, cabin, award type changes US$25 US$25 *RT= Round-trip, OW= one-way

How much do Access awards cost?

So how are Access awards actually pricing in the wild?

To answer the question, I’ve sampled a few popular destinations across First, Business and Economy **Class, **looking at three different scenarios:

• High: Flights that are departing within the next few days (when most seats are likely to have been sold)
• **Medium: **Flights that are departing within six months (when some, but not all seats are likely to have been sold)
• **Low: **Flights that have just opened for booking (when most seats are likely to still be available)

I’ll be the first to concede that these are prone to sampling error, but since I don’t have the means to do a comprehensive survey, it’ll have to do.

First Class

The cost of First Class tickets doesn’t really vary depending on how many seats are left, because there’s only one fare type. Therefore, it’s perhaps not surprising that the cost of an Access award remains the same regardless of whether we look at the High, Medium or Low scenario.

Access awards in First Class cost the same regardless of date

There is a pretty consistent pattern that Access awards cost 80% more than Advantage, and from what I can see so far, First Class to New York JFK sets the benchmark for the most costly Access award at 503,000 miles each way.

Business Class

In Business Class, I can see a consistent trend that the cheapest possible Access award costs 25% more than Advantage.

However, what’s also interesting is that unlike Cash + Miles, the cost of Access awards does not vary linearly with the cost of commercial tickets. For example, Access awards on SQ706 and SQ720 both cost 57,500 miles, even though a commercial ticket costs about S$39 more.

Access prices do not scale linearly with commercial ticket prices

This suggests to me that there is a price band within which the cost of Access awards remains constant, though I welcome more data points on this.

Premium Economy Class

In Premium Economy Class, the cheapest possible Access award costs 30% more than Advantage.

Here’s where I noticed another interesting thing. A one-way Premium Economy Access award from Singapore to New York JFK costs 110,000 miles, for a random departure date all the way in August 2026.

110,000 miles for Access, many months in advance

But the same seat on a flight departing **today **also costs 110,000 miles, notwithstanding the fact that you’d have to cough up almost S$3,500 if you paid cash!

Last minute booking: Also 110,000 miles!

This suggests that there is some sort of cap on Access award pricing, and could make it especially good value for last-minute bookings.

Economy Class

I don’t know if this section is even relevant, because I can’t think of why anyone would redeem Access awards for Economy Class in the first place.

I mean, it’s already marginal to redeem Economy Saver awards, and if those weren’t available, I would sooner buy a cash ticket with a different airline than redeem Advantage, let alone Access!

But anyway, for completeness’ sake, what I noticed here is that the cheapest possible Access award costs **30% more **than Advantage.

Other observations

Here are a few other random observations I noticed while poking through the system.

First, Access appears to offer last seat availability. In other words, if there’s a seat available for sale, you can book it through Access.

Only one seat left for commercial sales, but still bookable through Access

Second, because there is a cap on Access pricing, Access awards can actually be good value in **last-minute booking situations. **For example, if you needed to fly to Shanghai tomorrow, then paying 150,000 miles for a Business Access award is a heck of a lot better than paying S$4,685.

Last-minute flights represent particularly good value for Access awards | Screenshot: Derrick

Third, there are strange situations where the Access award for a **cheaper **flight option can cost **more. **For example, SQ336 is cheaper than SQ338, but the Access award costs 212,500 miles, versus 177,000 miles.

The cheaper flight (SQ336) costs more miles for Access!

It’s possible that this is just a pricing bug though, and may disappear in time.

Fourth, I’m starting to suspect that there may very well be an “Access award chart”, in the sense that Access awards will price at one of several tiers. This requires more research, so stay tuned.

Conclusion

KrisFlyer’s new Access awards are now live, and while some awards can be ridiculously expensive in absolute terms (1 million miles for a round-trip First Class ticket to New York, anyone?), there are also situations where the premium over Advantage is more modest.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the price of Access awards does not move as closely with commercial ticket prices as I expected, which makes last-minute bookings a particularly good use case.

In fact, with Business Class Access awards “only” 25% more expensive than Advantage, I’m sure there are miles-rich individuals out there who will relish the opportunity to lock in their plans.

All said, it’s still early days, and there’s a lot of data to go through. Here’s where I really need your help, so as you dig through the site and find interesting things, please flag them!

What trends are you noticing with Access awards?

(Cover photo: Plane’s Portrait Aviation Media)

Aaron Wong

Aaron founded The Milelion to help people travel better for less and impress chiobu. He was 50% successful.