Everyone knows that Gold status comes with things like lounges, priority this and that, and general preferential treatment. Take a look at our guide to KrisFlyer to have a look at the benefits Singapore Airlines advertises for Gold members.

What SQ doesn’t disclose on their list of benefits is the extra seat choices for Gold and PPS Club members.

Let’s take a look at a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong in Economy. When booked under a passenger without Gold/ PPS Status, this is seat map that is shown:

Meanwhile, when the same flight is booked by a Gold member, this seat map is displayed:

Clearly, there are a large number of extra seat choices for elite frequent flyers, a benefit that is relatively unknown to KrisFlyer members, as SQ doesn’t publicise this for whatever reason. Perhaps this is due to the fact that such a situation does not occur on every flight. For a number of reasons, some flights may show equal availability to all passengers, no matter their status, whilst others will open up more space to Elite members.

The idea of blocking seats is primarily to allow for partner/ family/ large group bookings, to manage the weight and balance of the aircraft, to appropriately seat unaccompanied minors, to cater for reserve crew/ deadheading crew/ staff and for a number of other strange ‘operational’ reasons. For these reasons, not all flights will be able to deliver these benefits to Elite members, and hence the benefit is not publicised.

Aside from this, all seats are opened up for selection by any passenger 72 hours before flight departure.