Singaporeans love to travel and Changi is a very busy airport for that reason. Although Changi is located relatively close to the city, there aren’t that many convenient and cheap ways to get to the airport. For instance, you could choose convenience over affordability and take a cab, which could cost anywhere between S$20 to S$50 depending on the hour of the day.
On the other hand, choosing bus or MRT could save you a lot of money but could take an hour or longer to get to the airport. You could drive and pay for a long-term parking, which could cost you even more than a cab ride. Is there a happy compromise between affordability and convenience? With these air mile credit cards, we think you can find a few ways of finding the happy medium.
Credit Cards with Free Airport Transfers
Air mile credit cards are great because they can rack up airline miles for you as you make your purchases. Everyone knows that. What everyone tends to forget, however, is that many of these awesome cards also come with benefits and perks that go outside of the typical mile rewards system.
Free airport transfers are one of those perks. As long as you book them in advance and don’t make the drivers wait for more than 15 minutes, some cards will provide you with a nice ride to the airport on a limousine contracted by the card companies. Below, we have organized the data and highlight key features of each card that come with this benefit. With these cards, you can start your trip in style and save money.
UOB PRVI Miles American Express Card
UOB PRVI Miles card is actually one of our favourite air mile travel credit cards in Singapore. It offers one of the highest mile award rates in the country without requiring the high fees charged by some of the other “luxury” travel cards in the market. It also wins out in terms of its free airport transfer service.
For people who spend at least S$1,000 overseas in a quarter, they can get up to 2 airport transfers within that quarter for a total of 8 one-way rides to Changi per year. The service is conducted through a form of a rebate of up to S$45 per ride. We think this is a good deal for most people, as they would not be making more trips to the airport unless they have to make frequent business trips.
Citi Prestige MasterCard Card
Citi Prestige is the runner-up in this realm of airport limousine service. Just like UOB PRVI Miles card, Citi Prestige offers up to 8 one-way rides to the airport per year. One of the major differences, however, is that Citi Prestige will let you utilize this service up to 4 times in a given quarter.
The caveat is that Citi Prestige requires a minimum overseas spend of S$1,500 for that quarter you will be travelling for you to qualify for this service, slightly more than UOB PRVI’s requirement of S$1,000. Still, you could be saving up to S$400 on airport transfers per year while riding in Mercedes. That seems like a great deal for us. Citi Prestige also comes with a plethora of other privileges that you can read about here.
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Card
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite card does not offer free airport limousine service. Why did we include this card in this list, then? It’s because Standard Chartered has put together a unique offer for holders of this card that goes beyond just airport transportation. Working with Uber, Standard Chartered Visa Infinite card will rebate 10% of all your Uber rides in 395 cities globally.
In Singapore, an Uber ride to the airport should only cost you about S$15-25, which is already much cheaper than taxi rides. Not only that, you can get the same benefits in your destination cities as well! Though the rebate is capped at S$400 per year, that’s still 10% rebate on S$4,000 worth of Uber rides, or roughly 200 Uber rides at an average cost of S$20 every year.
OCBC Voyage
OCBC Voyage is the last card in this series. It’s a luxury travel card from OCBC designed to compete with Citi Prestige and Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Card. Though it lags behind the others in many aspects, its most unique quality is the flexible mile redemption program. While most cards have a rather complicated system with blackout dates and require you to book your trip weeks in advance, OCBC Voyage lets you redeem your miles for any flights at any time, as long as there are sits available on the flight you want.
In terms of airport transfer service, it provides 1 transfer for people who maintain an S$5,000 of monthly expenditure on the card. Once you spend that much in a given month, they reward you with a free ride for the next 3 months. Until you redeem this service, you do not get more rides even if you spend S$5,000 in another month.
This system makes OCBC Voyage’s airport limousine service less attractive than offers from cards we discuss above, but it’s still a feature worth remembering so that you can squeeze every dollar of value from this card.
Conclusion
Travel cards can be rather expensive in terms of annual fees and minimum spend requirements. However, for those who know how to use these cards properly, they can be more valuable than other cards available in the market. Complimentary airport transfer service to Changi is just one of those services, and we recommend that you actively use this feature if you have any of the cards we discussed here.
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