How Long Does it Take for Singapore Airlines Miles to Refund After an Award Cancellation?

Singapore Airlines offers some of the most lowest cost award redemption change/cancellation fees of any airline.  For a complete overview, Lucky has a great post on change/cancel fees for all airlines.

Cancelling an award booking costs $30 USD and changing one costs $20.  That compares very favorably to United which will charge (without status) $200 to get your hard earned miles back in your account in the event of a cancellation!

Singapore Airlines First Class IFE

I recently had to make a change to an award that required a redeposit of miles.  Unfortunately you can't do this online and have to call.  Singapore Airlines has great customer service (24 hours) in the US and it only took 10 minutes to process the cancellation for the $30 fee.

Dom or Krug on SQ

The agent informed me that the taxes would be refunded to my credit card in 6-8 weeks and the miles refunded back to my account within 5-7 business days.

What?  That is an eternity to wait when award availability is limited.  Well good news - I can report that the miles posted back to my account in ~36 hours.

Singapore Airlines BMW designed First Class (777-300ER)

I did process the cancellation on a Sunday so perhaps that slowed things down.  Either way, being able to rebook within a couple of days was no big deal and the new award was still available once the miles were safely back in my KrisFlyer account.