Finding Singapore Airlines Business Saver awards has become much harder over the past few years especially if you’re travelling during school holidays or peak periods.
For our Dec 2026 Europe trip, we needed 6 Business Class seats (3 outbound, 3 return).
In the end we managed to book:
- 2 x Business Saver (Singapore → Brussels)
- 1 x Business Advantage (same flight)
- 3 x Business Saver (London Gatwick → Singapore)
5 Saver awards during December wasn’t something I expected to find manually but the tool that made the biggest difference for me was Seats.aero.
After using it for 7 months, here’s what I like, what I don’t and whether I’d actually pay for it.
What is Seats.aero?
Seats.aero is an award flight search engine. Instead of checking airline websites route by route, it searches award availability across multiple frequent flyer programmes at once.
You can:
- Search entire regions
- Look months ahead
- Filter by cabin class
- Filter by number of seats
- Set alerts when award seats appear
If you’ve ever refreshed KrisFlyer every day hoping Business Saver magically appears, this automates a lot of that process.
How I Used It For This Trip
For our outbound flight, I searched Europe for December.
Most destinations had nothing although Brussels eventually appeared with 2 Business Saver seats. I checked KrisFlyer and the same seats were available there so I booked them using KrisFlyer miles. Unfortunately, the third passenger only had Business Advantage available so we booked that instead.
The return journey was even harder. Initially there wasn’t even a single Business Saver seat back to Singapore. But instead of checking every day, I created an alert on Seats.aero. A few days later I received a notification that 3 Business Saver seats had opened from London Gatwick and I booked them immediately.
For me, the alerts feature is the biggest reason to use Seats.aero.
Does It Work With KrisFlyer?
This is probably the biggest question for Singapore users and the answer is … Sometimes.
While Seats.aero has added KrisFlyer to it’s search engine, Singapore Airlines has also repeatedly changed how its award inventory can be accessed. As a result, KrisFlyer seats tend to appear, disappear and reappear.
Despite this, even when KrisFlyer isn’t working directly, I still find the tool useful because it searches partner programmes like:
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- United MileagePlus
and more importantly, Singapore Airlines flights are still bookable through these partners.
While partner inventory isn’t identical to KrisFlyer inventory, it often provides a very good indication that award space exists although it’s important to still verify availability directly before transferring any points.
Why I Booked Some Flights Through Aeroplan
Here’s where it gets a bit more interesting (although if you already have a healthy Krisflyer balance and are looking for the simplest and most straightforward option to book your redemption tickets, this may not be for you).
This time, I chose not to book my return flights through Krisflyer, I booked them through Air Canada Aeroplan instead because:
- KrisFlyer Saver = 108,500 miles
- Aeroplan = 80,000 points
That’s a 35% difference in points for the same seat on the same flight.
2 important caveats though:
- Aeroplan points are much harder to earn in Singapore.
- I bought Aeroplan points during a 90% bonus sale which reduced my cost significantly
(I got them at 1.83¢/mile). While this isn’t the cheapest option, it’s still worth it if redeeming higher value redemptions (eg. Business Saver can deliver 4 – 6 mpd in value).
I also managed to convert Max Miles which I’ve accumulated to Aeroplan points.
To be fair, I got lucky because I managed to book these tickets before Aeroplan devalued its award chart last month and before HeyMax ceased being a transfer partner. At the moment, only HSBC remains as a partner although the conversion ratio negates much of the value.
TLDR:
At this point, Aeroplan beats Krisflyer on the same seat on the same flight only if you catch a 90% – 100% points sale, don’t have enough Krisflyer miles, are too impatient to accumulate miles or are trying to book tickets for a larger group of people because it’s not limited to 5 nominees like Krisflyer.
My Favourite Aeroplan Features
1. Search
This is the feature I use most.
Apart from checking one city at a time, you can also view award availability across an entire region which was what we did for our booking – we confirmed our flights for SG to Brussels and were able to search for the Europe Region (EUR) to SG for the return flight back to SG.
It quickly shows which destinations actually have seats available.
Here’s an example of a search I just did of direct flights from EUR to SG flights on SQ that are still available on Business Class +/- 60 days from 1 Dec 2026.
Mousing over the amount of miles required also shows you the taxes and the number of seats available which makes it very convenient. You may also notice that the miles required on Canada Aeroplan is slightly lower (92,500) as compared to SQ (108,500) and this is after Canada Aeroplan’s devaluation in June. It was 80,000 before devaluation.
2. Alerts
This is my favourite feature.
Set an alert for:
- Route
- Cabin
- Date
- Number of seats
- Maximum points
And when seats become available, you’ll receive a notification.
This saved me from manually checking every day.
Below is an example of setting an Alert for EUR to SIN for Dec on Business Class. You can also set the Min Seats (eg. 2 if you’d like to travel with a partner). And you can also set a cap on the max amount of points if you’d like to look at just Saver (or Advantage), so that you avoid Access altogether.
3. Explore
If you’d like a broad destination discovery without a fixed date, the Explore function is useful.
For example, below is a search of all flights from SIN to my favourite cities throughout the year, and I’m able to see exactly which days are still available on Business Saver and how many seats are available.
4. Premium Cabin Finders
If you’re specifically chasing products like:
- Qatar QSuites
- ANA First
- Emirates First
- JAL First
these tools save a huge amount of manual searching.
Should You Pay For Pro?
The free version is surprisingly usable and I’d recommend this:
Free Version
- You only redeem occasionally.
- You’re happy searching within 60 days.
- You don’t need advanced alerts.
Pro Version ($9.99/month or $99.99/year)
Worth considering if you:
- Redeem multiple times each year
- Travel in Business or First
- Need to search almost a year ahead
- Want automatic alerts
Personally, the alerts alone justify the subscription for me.
Things I Don’t Like
While it saves me a lot of time, Seats.aero isn’t perfect,
- KrisFlyer support isn’t always available. It comes and goes depending on changes made by Singapore Airlines.
- Results are cached so availability may disappear before you manage to book (remember to always verify before transferring points!).
- Outbound and inbound flights need to be searched separately because it doesn’t search on a round trip basis. You’ll have to search for each segment individually (eg. SIN to EUR and EUR to SG separately) instead of a round-trip business saver option.
- The app can be a bit buggy at times, some tools can only be available on the web.
- It assumes you know the game so it won’t tell you which card to use, how to transfer or which program to book with. If you’re to milehacking, I’d recommend learning Krisflyer basics first before you dive into this.
My Verdict
Seats.aero doesn’t replace the SQ website, I still verify every award on SQ before I move any miles. What it does replace, is the endless searching.
For this trip alone, it helped us secure 6 Business Class seats, of which 5 were Saver tickets during the peak December period and we only booked less than 6 months out.
Could I have found those manually? Probably.
Would it have taken significantly more time? Definitely.
If you value speed and convenience, Seats.aero can save you a lot of time. The alerts help you track award availability without constantly checking airline websites. It’s also useful if you want to search across different airline programmes and spot redemption options you might otherwise miss.
If you found this useful and would like to sign up for Seats.aero, you can get a free trial by signing up via my referral link here.
