Useless singaporeair.com booking engine

[kt74]

Why oh why is the booking engine on the website so bl00dy useless???

It's basically fine if you want to fly return from anywhere to Singapore on a direct flight where there is one flight a day in each direction. But as soon as you want to do anything mildly complex (like change planes in SIN, or specify a time of departure - e.g. morning flight or evening flight), it gets completely thrown

My problem:

I want to fly LHR-KUL-SIN-LHR in W class. It only gives me a handful of options for LHR-KUL, many of which involve too-short-stopovers or the MH codeshares (which aren't available in W, so increase the price dramatically). The flights I want, which have plenty of W availability don't show up

OK, so I separate LHR-KUL into 2 segments. Now the problem is that for KUL-SIN return segment it only offers me a choice of the 5 codeshare flights - not a single SQ operated flight (despite the fact that I know there is W availability on all the SQ flights, because I can see it on seatcounter.com)

So, basically, I can't book the SQ-only internet fare on the SQ internet site, because it's physically incapable of letting me select the flights and fare classes I want. By comparison, the booking engines for BA/QF/UA and others are far more sophisticated and allow far more flexible flight and pricing options

For a allegedly 5 star world class airline, I hope to god somebody would sort out the idiot booking systems

PS If anyone knows a solution to forcing the booking engine to spit out the flights I want, please let me know!

[nickbot]

I have faced a similar issue, which was dealt with efficiently by a booking agent over the telephone -I explained the position, and the flights were sorted out. I mentioned that there was an internet special price (the New Year Sale IIRC), and she honoured this. Can only suggest you try giving them a call

[kt74]

Can only suggest you try giving them a call

Thanks, nickbot, and that tactic has worked for me in the (long, distant) past... However, if you book through the call centre, do you now get the same functionality as on the website (i.e. select seats in advance, etc?)

[nickbot]

Thanks, nickbot, and that tactic has worked for me in the (long, distant) past... However, if you book through the call centre, do you now get the same functionality as on the website (i.e. select seats in advance, etc?)

Pass It's been a while since I've used that tactic (if I remember correctly, it was early 2006), so I couldn't comment. I'm sure someone with more in-depth (and up to date!) knowledge will be along shortly

[N_Architect]

While I am not the guy with the more in-depth knowledge, may I say I faced the same thing recently when I wanted to book a series of two OW routes stitched together (each OW route going thru SIN, hence four legs total on that itinerary). Couldn't even get route availability on SQ website.

Called my TA (as I wanted to add an OZ OW rtn to base flight) and made the booking. I asked for specific seats, my TA called the SQ agent in Seoul, seats I requested were selected w/o any delay, booking now appears in 'My bookings' area when I log in, but cannot make any changes. Same for meals, not able to choose meal options. Supposedly if I want to make any changes I have to do it through an SQ agent or (if I interpreted correctly what my TA originally told me) only two months prior to traveling.

[dcflyer]

The SQ website is an embarrassment. It's amazing that world class airline has such a terrible website. I can only assume that the bean counters think it not worth the cost to update it or that senior management is like John McCain and doesn't know how to use the internets.

[SQflyergirl]

My pet peeve: does not handle mixed class bookings well. Sometimes/some routes they work, other times - sheer frustration

[Kyo]

I can't seem to get it to do a proper stopover, even in their multi-city page... this was a problem I had back in March and it's still not fixed...

*rolls eyes*

[LampStack]

I think that a company such as SIA certainly has the knowledge and capability to remedy this problem.

It appears to me that the intent is lacking.

I can't quite understand why that would be though.

ls

[soak01]

I seem to just have difficulties with making online bookings through to LAX.

It doesn't matter which dates into the futrure I pick, I can book ADL/LAX/ADL as a return flight with a forced overnight stopover in SIN on the outbound flight with no problem, but if I try and use the multi-stop option to book a stop over in Singapore on the return (say 7 nights) I just get the usual error message.

Also any combination involving LAX also throws up the error message. Hence, ADL/SFO/SIN/ADL works as does ADL/SFO/-/YVR/SIN/ADL but as soon as I try LAX (e.g. ADL/LAX/-/YVR/SIN/ADL or ADL/LAX/-/SFO/SIN/ADL) it has a melt down.

Could this be a sign of schedule changes planned with LAX?