As if Scoot has not enough problems with the evolving travel bans, its next line of defence – the call centre – will be hung up from today (17 Mar 2020). Scoot announced early this morning that their call centre in the Philippines will be closed from 17 March 2020 due to a national lockdown.
From today onwards, Scoot will no longer be charging a payment processing fee for its airfares. You’ll no longer need to pay any additional fees regardless of which method of payment you choose to use, whichever sector you buy, and from which city you booked it from. Singapore customers were previously charged S$10 per person, per flight for payment made through selected credit cards and PayPal, so that means that if you were booking a return ticket, you would have to spend an additional $20 on top of whatever fare and add-ons you chose. With this change, Jetstar and AirAsia, two of the other key low cost carriers, remain to be the only ones still charging a ‘convenience’ fee for using credit card payments – it remains to be seen if they will follow suit.
From now until 18 June 2019, earn an extra 4 miles per dollar spent on Scoot, when using the Singapore Airlines branded American Express cards. The bonus miles is on top of the base earn rates (i.e. 1.3 mpd for the PPS branded cards, 1.2 mpd for the Ascend and 1.1 mpd for the blue Krisflyer card), so that means you will earn up to 5.3 miles per dollar spent. The maximum number of bonus miles you can earn is capped at 1,200 miles, i.e. S$300 spend. That’s not a difficult one to hit. There’s also no restrictions on where you need to begin your trip in, so that makes planning really flexible. To qualify for this offer, you must either have received an email from Amex, or log into your Amex app to check if you are served the offer. The offer is limited to the first 10,000 registrations although I have not heard of anyone who was rejected.
SilkAir has announced that it will transfer 17 destinations to the low-cost subsidiary Scoot progressively, starting from April 2019. In the same announcement, Scoot will be stopping its Honolulu service, barely a year after the inaugural service. It will also be giving up four other destinations that is currently served by SilkAir and Singapore Airlines. SilkAir to Scoot transfers The destinations SilkAir will be giving up to Scoot, along with the dates that will happen, are below: Country City Date Laos Luang Prabang, Vientiane April 2019 China Changsha, Fuzhou, Kunming, Wuhan May, June 2019 India Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Visakhapatnam May – October 2019 Thailand Chiang Mai October 2019 Malaysia Kota Kinabalu December 2019 Indonesia Balikpapan, Lombok, Makassar, Manado, Semarang, Yogyakarta May – July 2020 SilkAir has earlier this year transferred 6 other services – Hangzhou, Kalibo, Kuching, Langkawi, Palembang and Pekanbaru – to Scoot as well. Observers who are following the merger keenly will know that 14 of SilkAir’s current fleet of Boeing 737-800s will be transferred to Scoot progressively as well, while Singapore Airlines will …
Shanescape 