Our ground staff in Jakarta should have just accepted Mr Law's redemption ticket at face value for travel on the next flight to Singapore, given the flood situation.

Normally, customers holding redemption tickets are allowed to change their flight or date of travel as long as the change is made during the validity period, and on the same route. However, there is a cancellation fee of US$75, or 7,500 KrisFlyer frequent-flier miles, in the event of a change.

In Mr Law's case, he did not have enough KrisFlyer miles to pay for the cancellation fee. So he bought a new ticket which was for a return Jakarta- Singapore-Jakarta trip, not one-way Jakarta-Singapore. We will refund the additional collection he was charged versus the usual fare he would have paid for a return ticket.

As a practice, we do waive cancellation fee for customers who have to change flights due to extraordinary circumstances like bad weather, which are beyond their control.

Regarding the matter of crew rest, there are universally established mandatory minimum rest hours for air crew due to safety reasons before they can re-operate a flight. For short-haul routes, our crew do operate the turnaround on the same route or in combination with other routes to maximise the duty time allowable.

Ong Boon Khim
Vice-President,
Customer Affairs
Singapore Airlines