Getting Ready - Thailand Pass and Singapore Airlines Saga

Posts in this series:

Getting Ready - Thailand Pass and Singapore Airlines Saga

Review - Intercontinental Boston

Review - Japan Airlines Business Class B787-9 Boston to Tokyo Narita

Review - Japan Airlines Business Class B787-8 Tokyo Narita to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi

Review - The Athenee Bangkok, A Luxury Collection Hotel

Review - Le Méridien Chiang Mai

Review - Renaissance Koh Samui Resort & Spa

Review - The Ritz-Carlton Koh Samui

Review - Emirates Business Class A380 Bangkok Suvarnabhumi to Dubai

Preparing For Thailand:

It seriously takes a few advanced degrees to plan travel these days. The challenges are particularly exacerbated when you’re going to a destination whose government is disorganized and indecisive, well, in our case, Thailand. From the very early onset, it was nearly impossible to find any official information regarding various updates/policies. When the Test & Go scheme was announced, the only official channel that released the information was the Thai tourism ministry facebook. No link to an official statement, mind you, but rather just a picture.

To add to the headache, when I woke up in the morning on the 21st of December, the news had broken out that Thailand was suspending Test & Go due to concerns from Omicron starting midnight on December 22nd, Bangkok time. There was a 12-hr difference between Bangkok and New York, which meant by the time I saw the news I had 3 hours left to apply for Thailand Pass, which is one of the documents you need to enter the Kingdom.

When I was applying for Thailand Pass, I had no expectation that it would be approved, given the country obviously wanted to curtail foreign entries. Much to my surprise, however, both my partner’s and mine were approved within 24 hours of submissions. This gave us a bit more confidence with the whole situation.

Not to serve as any authoritative guidance, but to travel to Thailand we had prepared Thailand Pass, a ticket departing Thailand, a confirmed hotel booking for at least the first night, travel insurance covering at least $50,000 per person, vaccine record and a PCR test within 3 days of departure. Of all the requirements, the hotel booking needed to be for a Test & Go package, which mandated private transfer from airport to hotel and an on-arrival PCR test. We found it the easiest to just book with a hotel that provides this package. You absolutely will NOT be able to arrive in Bangkok and connect onwards to another domestic destination on the same day, as you will need to stay in your “quarantine” hotel until your on-arrival PCR test comes back negative. I put quotation on quarantine because there were many expedited testing options with various turnaround time. We booked a 2-hr option and were free to leave our room before we could finish our room service dinner.

As you might have read from the introduction post, our plan was to go to Singapore first. Singapore offered a different scheme called Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL), where vaccinated travelers from certain countries can visit without quarantine. The catch was you had to arrive on a VTL-designated flight. The scheme is currently still suspended as of writing, so I won’t go into details on the application process because I’m relatively confident the requirements will be reduced when it’s resumed.

Singapore Airlines Saga:

There we were, on the evening of December 27th, 2021, all packed and ready for our first intercontinental adventure since the pandemic started. We arrived at JFK at 6:30pm for our 9:40pm flight to Singapore.

To establish a bit of context, I hold a passport that qualifies for the Visa Free Transit Facility (VFTF) outlined by the Singaporean government, which essentially allows entry into Singapore for 96 hours when transiting through without the need to obtain a visa beforehand. I’ve taken advantage of this a few times in the past and had never encountered any issues. For those interested, the official webpage for VFTF is here.

The check-in agent did not agree, unfortunately. Singapore Airlines employs contract workers at JFK, so these agents are not Singapore Airlines’ employees. Nonetheless, the first agent decided to bring up the issue to another agent, who seemed to be in more of a supervisory role. We’ll call him agent H, which is his name initial. Agent H started digging by looking at a three-ring binder. According to him, the binder had all the pertinent information regarding entry requirements. He could not find anything. I proactively offered to show him the webpage, which even had the header “a Singapore government agency”. He refused to read the page as he only wished to follow his binder.

During this whole interaction agent H was summoned by various other agents as H was also tasked to troubleshoot for everybody else. Therefore almost an hour had passed, and agent H had not made progress on his quest for confirmation. We suggested H escalate this issue even more to a managerial person, when manager JP came into the picture.

JP already seemed convicted that he wasn’t going to let us board. He said he asked his managers and was told he couldn’t let us go. We asked for the reason, he said they didn’t know about this regulation. He said he’d check with Singapore’s immigration office, then took out his phone, sent a picture of my passport page to a Whatsapp account. It was rather incomprehensible that they didn’t have a direct line they could call in these situations. JP interrupted us on several occasions and spoke profanities to several of his subordinates. On one instance, he said “fuck it, my ass is on the line. Ticket him.”, relating to another passenger.

When my partner started to seek other agents for insights, as time was running out, JP went on a power trip and stood up from his desk, went over to my partner and the other two agents and yelled “They both work for me. They ain’t gonna do anything unless I tell them to.” and walked off.

Eventually they closed the flight for check-in, and we were told to call Singapore Airlines to rebook for the next day.

The whole experience was extremely unprofessional and infuriating. Not only did the agents not know the rule, they didn’t even intend to look it up. There were a few times where agent H was on the fence about whether or not to check us in, and based on what he told us, it clearly indicated he didn’t even bother to read the fine print that was on the official website. It was rather absurd that all they could refer to was a binder with 500+ pages of information. He might have flipped through a few pages but that didn’t warrant their refusal to allow us to travel.

It was especially frustrating that the issue wasn’t even Covid-related. The behaviors from the manager JP were just simply outlandish. I have never witnessed a frontline customer service person cuss on the job in front of many passengers. The fact that he felt his authority was undermined when my partner decided to talk to other agents was telling. But little did I know, the incompetence from the ground staff at JFK was only the tip of an iceberg compared to the incompetence from Singapore Airlines’ contact center.

We made it back home from JFK and started calling Singapore Airlines to make changes. The first agent who answered the phone was Colleen. After explaining everything that had unraveled at JFK, Colleen informed me that she would have to check with the ground staff at JFK to confirm the my side of the story before she could rebook us. At this point the flight next day was in less than 24 hours, and it was 11pm in New York. I reminded her that it was late in New York, and that I would not be able to stay up all night expecting her callback. I’m not sure if all was lost in translation, but all she said was she understood and someone would call me back. I eventually told her that would not work for me, and that I expected a callback in two hours, as that was how long I planned to wait. She said no problem.

Fast forward to the next morning at 10AM, when the possibility of a callback seemed remote. We rang Singapore’s contact center again and were connected to Christian. We reiterated every detail to Christian, to which he told us that a rebooking would not be possible because Singapore had suspended sales of VTL flights. This information was only half true. We told Christian that was fine, and that we would just travel directly from Singapore to Thailand without a stopover, which was allowable as transiting itineraries were exempted. He told us that was still not possible, even after we reminded him to check with his supervisor regarding the details of the new regulation.

Talking with Christian felt like beating a dead horse, as he was not able to provide any resolution whatsoever, so we requested to speak with a supervisor. Christian first told us that there were no supervisors, we pushed back, Christian then told us a supervisor would call us back within an hour. This was his timeline, not ours.

The callback was received 13 hours later, almost midnight on the 28th of December, from an agent named Kimmie. By then, we had made alternative arrangement to travel On Japan Airlines instead, so we asked Kimmie to refund our tickets, which were booked with miles and cash. She agreed. As of the time of this article on January 25th, 2022, the miles and cash have yet to be refunded.

On January 1st, 2022, we filed a complaint on the feedback page on Singapore Airlines’ website. The complaint has not been responded as of January 25th, 2022.

Due to the nonresponse from Singapore Airlines, we filed an official complaint with the US Department of Transportation regarding the involuntary denial of boarding. I’ll keep you updated on the status of this case.

While I’ve flown with Singapore Airlines and its subsidiaries over two dozen times, I’ve never dealt with such palpable inaction. The airline has no process, no oversight and no accountability. I’m beyond speechless by the series of extreme ineptitude demonstrated by every level of its employees. Undoubtedly this has tarnished any goodwill I had for the airline. Although Singapore’s cabin experience is decent, in case of something goes wrong, it is not an airline you could entrust.