The useless new website, launched in May 2011

[mr_botak]

This shouldn't be news but I have sucessfully made a booking through the website, including seat selection. Yay!

I shall now await check in to open to see if my luck continues.

[Dobson73]

Smooth booking process for flights at Christmas. Seat selection worked well and although it was a little slow, the site worked as I'd expect. After fiddling with both QF and NZ websites in the previous months, I'd say the SQ website is the easier of the 3.

My only issue now is that my initial flight search never works. I always have to reenter the details a 2nd time before I can proceed. Aside from that, the site seems to finally be performing well.

[9V-SIA]

Nice to see the MI website is back.

And I can finally select my seat

[sabian]

Use the mobile website.

More reliable and can select seats for silkair bookings too (not possible on desktop site)

Best regards,

Charles

I had to book 4 tickets from SIN-SGN. I have never used the mobile app so I thought I gave it a try.

Every time, I saved the seat reservation changes, the app crashes and I have to re-login.

Other than that, everything was ok.

[Kyo]

No miles posted on a BNE-SIN flight last month (it was a Y-J upgrade). Tried to do a retroactive claim on their website and get this instead:

"Sorry, we are unable to process your request, please try again later or contact your local Singapore Airlines office."

Excellent.

[sabian]

So I checked back a few days later as advised by the KF agent. Seat map still not in.

Called KF again, now it seems there might be an equipment change for the outgoing flight...hence the seat map's unavailable.

Managed to reserve seats for the return leg.

[crazycrab955]

Looks like you cannot pull up bookings made through other parties (e.g. redemption from another *A carrier with segments on SQ) anymore. I have the SQ PNR and previously could input it to bring up the booking details, change my seat, BTC, etc.

No more.

This is what I now see:

We are unable to retrieve your booking because this booking contains ticket(s) which is not issued by Singapore Airlines. Please check with the airline or travel agent you have made this booking with.

Trying very hard not to mind how they've ended the sentence with a preposition, as I do recognise that grammar issues are the least of this web site's problems at present.

Looks like any sort of changes with seat or meal will have to go through the call centre now. It appears I can still use the SQ mobile app to make seat changes, though.

Not an improvement!

[Gunnar Smithsen]

Had an interesting experience when I went to update a few things to my booking - which I made via the SQ Mobile iPhone App...

In the app I couldn't add my A3 number so decided to add that info into the booking - no problems there - happy days...

But what struck me as surprising and/or weird and/or puzzling and/or just par for the course really, was that despite not requesting MOML at any stage of my booking there it was! And naturally, the website being the website won't allow me to change that - not that I'm overally fussed as I'm rather impartial to a MOML every now and then

[viraj735]

Had the following error whilst trying to amend a booking made ON THE WEBSITE.

"We are unable to retrieve your booking because this booking contains ticket(s) which is not issued by Singapore Airlines. Please check with the airline or travel agent you have made this booking with."

[barbene]

I had a horrible time yesterday just trying to do some basic stuff - like make a booking, change some seats on an existing booking and even some adventurous stuff like select a meal preference. Each and every time I ran into a problem from screen hangs, to strange error messages such as "Internal Error" and all sorts. It is so frustrating. I really can't believe that they can still have such a lousy website whilst trying to brand themselves as a premium carrier. Obviously it seems fixing this monster is impossible. Maybe they should start again.

Cheers

[Pascal]

I booked an upgrade redemption over the website a couple of days ago. Miles were immediately deducted from my account, but the booking still shows “Economy Class”. A moment later I received a confirmation mail saying:

Details of your upgraded flight(s) are as follows: … Economy Class

More than 15 months and this web site still doesn’t work for anything else than the most basic tasks. Is SIA actually still trying to fix this rubbish or have they given up?

[Quattro]

All I wanted is to select my seats and they responded with this :

"Our System has detected multiple sessions from the same browser. Please help to close all the broswers and retry.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
For security reasons, please clear your cache after each session."

I wouldn't need to do this if they had assigned according to my preference (aisle) which they have on record. I'm suddenly assigned Middle seats in J.
And the flight is not full with aisle seats still available

And this is on top of having 3 phantom bookings like these in my "current bookings" list :

64**** 1A
Singapore (SIN) to (), Mon 03 Jun 2013
View and manage
42**** 1A
Singapore (SIN) to (), Sun 30 Jun 2013
View and manage
5**** 1A
Singapore (SIN) to (), Fri 05 Jul 2013
***** TAN (81*******)

Email enquiry sent without response...

I just booked a flight to Indonesia for my helper and the AirAsia site was such a breeze

[Dickson]

SIA creates senior IT post
Airline sets out to improve customer experience after website fiasco

SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) has created a new senior vice-president position - a move that industry insiders say is a sign that the airline is determined to debug its website once and for all and ensure that all its other IT applications run smoothly.

The post of senior vice-president (information technology) will go to Mr Tan Chik Quee, SIA's current senior vice-president (marketing). It is effective from Oct 8.

The change in portfolio for Mr Tan is part of a larger reorganisation within the company.

Under this shift, SIA's IT department will be hived off as a standalone unit, with Mr Tan reporting directly to chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong.

Before this, IT came under the corporate planning umbrella, which includes public relations and communications.

In an interview carried in the September issue of the airline's in-house newsletter, Outlook, Mr Tan said that fixing the website will be one of his priorities.

He told Outlook: "There is no denying that the revamp was problematic and we still have some issues to address."

While the major bugs have been fixed, the focus now is to improve customer experience and this has to be a permanent area of focus, he said, adding: "We cannot just stop one day and say that everything has been addressed and nothing more needs to be done."

SIA's website has been a blemish on the airline's reputation since it was relaunched on May 22 last year.

On launch day, it was taken down for more than an hour because of software bugs.

Months after that, customers continued to face user problems, including booking flights and retrieving flight and travel information.

Mobile phone users have encountered similar issues on its mobile app as well.

The Outlook article said that the restructuring will allow SIA to focus more on the IT side of its business.

As more travellers do their bookings and other transactions online and via mobile apps, airlines need to ensure that they have reliable IT systems, analysts said.

As part of the changes, Mr Chin Yau Seng, who will return to SIA after more than a year at Tiger Airways, will become acting senior vice-president (sales and marketing).

Mr Chin was parachuted in by Tiger's board to steer the carrier back to stability after its Australian arm was grounded over safety concerns.

SIA, which owns about a third of the budget carrier, said then that the intention was for Mr Chin to eventually return.

[ozdude]

While the major bugs have been fixed

Yeah right. They must be using some magical intranet there for their testing.

[SQ218]

Helped make a booking for a friend and her infant. Suprisingly succeeded but the only road block was the infants age. The infant fare rule states the infant must not be 2 years or older on departure when booked before the infants second birthday. Yet the booking wouldn't proceed as the infants departure is a couple of days before his departure when entering actual birthdate. Had to ring the ticketing office and confirm and the agent say to just use a later birthdate for the booking to proceed and they can change it.