[Last Chance To Earn Star Alliance Gold Status For 2 Years!] You Can Earn Star Alliance Gold Status By Transferring Miles To Singapore, But Should You?

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Update: This offer ends tomorrow at 10:59AM ET!

Update: Elite status earned with this offer will be valid for 2 years thanks to status extensions!

Originally posted on 4/7/21:

Singapore Airlines is now offering 1 elite mile for every 5 miles converted from bank points to miles. The promotion is valid from today through 2/28/22 Singapore time.

You must transfer at least 10,000 miles to earn elite miles. It can take up to 7 business days for the elite miles to post to your account. There’s no limit to how many transfers you can make to earn the bonus.

• Singapore Silver elite status/Star Alliance Silver status requires 25,000 elite miles, or a transfer of 125,000 redeemable miles from a bank with this promotion.
• Singapore Gold elite status/Star Alliance Gold status requires 50,000 elite miles, or a transfer of 250,000 redeemable miles from a bank with this promotion.

US bank transfer partners include:

• AMEX (1:1 ratio, instant transfer)
• Capital One (1:1 ratio, instant transfer)
• Chase (1:1 ratio, transfers in less than 1 day)
• Citibank (1:1 ratio, transfers in about 1 day)

Status lasts for just 12 months from the date that you qualify, so don’t transfer over miles until you have a need for the status.

If you do transfer over 250,000 miles to earn Gold status now, you can to renew that status for another 12 months by earning another 50,000 elite miles during your membership year. In another words if you transfer over 250,000 miles now and the elite miles posted on 4/15/21, you would get Gold status through 4/15/22. If you transfer over another 250,000 miles after that, your status would be extended through 4/15/23.

Star Alliance Silver status doesn’t really have meaningful benefits, but Star Alliance Gold status does.

Star Alliance Gold status allows you and a guest access to Star Alliance lounges worldwide when flying on any Star Alliance carrier. Incredibly, non-United Star Alliance Gold status also works to get access to United Clubs even when flying on domestic itineraries. United doesn’t even allow their own 1K Star Alliance Gold elites to access United Clubs on domestic first class tickets unless they have a paid United Club membership!

Star Alliance Gold status comes with a free checked bag, but it doesn’t stack on top of the free bag that United credit cards come with.

Star Alliance Gold status also comes with priority baggage handling, priority boarding, priority Gold Track security and immigration lines, priority waitlisting, and upgrades to business first class on the Heathrow Express.

United does not give economy plus seats or upgrades to partner Star Alliance Gold members, though they do offer free same day confirmed flight changes.

Singapore Gold status also gives you:

• Access to Virgin Atlantic Clubhouses when flying Virgin Atlantic
• Access to Virgin Australia lounges with a guest when flying Virgin Australia
• 3 free 50 pound bags on Singapore US flights in economy or 70 pound bags in business/first class.
• Singapore normally only allows you to redeem miles for 5 designated individuals and charges a $30 fee to change your redemption list. That fee is waived for Gold elites.

Is it worth transferring 250,000 points to Singapore to get Star Alliance Gold?

That will depend on how you value lounge access, as that’s the primary benefit.

One major caveat is that Singapore miles expire after 36 months and they can’t be extended with activity, so you need to use them or lose them.

Another caveat is that earlier this year Singapore was giving a 15% bonus on mileage transfers. Had you transferred 250,000 miles then, you would have received 37,500 bonus miles, which you won’t get now.

Singapore only makes long-haul premium cabin awards available to their own members, so having Singapore miles is not a bad thing.

This was the Singapore suite Mimi and I flew in from JFK to Frankfurt en route in Paris in 2012, booked with 57,000 Singapore miles:

And here is the updated Singapore A380 suite:

Here is the Singapore award chart for their own flights and here is the Singapore award chart for Star Alliance flights.

• Sample one-way Singapore redemptions:
  • JFK to Frankfurt or Houston to Manchester in business class: 72K
  • JFK to Frankfurt or Houston to Manchester in first/suites class: 86K
  • JFK/Newark to Singapore in business class: 99K
  • San Francisco to Hong Kong in business class: 89K
  • San Francisco to Hong Kong in first/suites class: 104K
• Sample one-way Star Alliance redemptions:
  • JFK to Los Angeles in business class: 23K
  • Newark to Maui in business class: 34.5K
  • Newark to Tel Aviv in business class: 76.5K

The Star Alliance rates are decent, but you can do better with partner miles from airlines like ANA or Turkish. Then again you get Gold status just for transferring over miles. If you’re redeeming for a ticket and the redemption makes sense, that can be worthwhile.

If Singapore miles didn’t have a hard expiration date or if Singapore elite status lasted longer than 12 months, I’d be a lot more excited about this offer. As it stands now, it can be worth pursuing if you have a redemption that makes sense or if you really want Star Alliance Gold status now and are sure you’ll use the miles within 36 months. Otherwise, wait and see what happens until the offer expires next February.

Will you take advantage of this offer?

HT: mochjas, via DDF and Eluzer K