A couple of days ago, Emirates Skywards posted a notice on its mileage calculator stating that changes to reward redemption rates for Classic Rewards and Upgrade Rewards would take effect on May 21st:
Those changes are now live, with both good news and bad. On the tough side, round-trip premium-cabin award prices and business-class upgrades are now ~15% higher across the board. But there’s a silver lining: it’s now possible to book one-way saver awards, something that could be helpful in actually getting your butt in one of those premium cabin seats. Previously, Emirates had only allowed one-way business class Flex Plus awards, which are much more expensive.
As a consequence, the one-way price of a business-class seat on one of the airline’s “fifth freedom” flights between Athens and Newark, or between JFK and Milan, has actually gone down by almost a third, from 87k miles to 59k. So, while round-trip and upgrade prices have increased by 15%, opening Classic awards to one-way bookings means that they are actually quite a bit cheaper than before.
Those two fifth-freedom flights between NYC and Europe now have the following pricing:
- Business Classic
- one-way: 59k (not possible previously)
- round-trip: 118k (up from 108k)
- Business Flex Plus
- One-way: 100k (up from 87k)
- Round-trip: 200k (up from 181k)
- Business class upgrade
- From Economy Saver: 90K (up from 82k)
- From Economy Flex Plus: 45k (up from 39k)
Quick Thoughts
Emirates has continuously devalued its rewards in recent years and also reduced availability when booking through partners like Air Canada Aeroplan. First-class awards have become restricted to Emirates elite members when booking through Emirates, transfer ratios for bank currencies have decreased, and surcharges have increased dramatically. It’s essentially been a continuous slide towards mediocrity (or worse).
While it’s easy to be incredulous that Emirates has again increased the prices of many awards, the ability to now book one-way saver (Classic) awards makes this particular group of changes more pro than con, in my opinion. I don’t mind seeing round-trip rates on those cheapest awards increase by 9% if that means I can book a one-way for less than 60k and not have to find return availability at the same time. For most folks looking to get the most value from their points and miles, this will likely make the program more useful…although that’s an admittedly low bar after the way it’s been hacked away at for last couple of years.
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why don’t you post the fees required for the fifth freedom flights, to give us an idea? include the $ portion as well please along with the 59k points, etc.
But can you find the saver seats? Also I learned the hard way that points from transferable currencies do NOT go into the family account! Although Marriott did and the emirates credit card did. Felt like a giant gotcha! Now have 68000 points stranded in family account and I had to spend $800 buying emirates points in my individual account to retrieve the situation I had worked my way into. Also found out it takes about three weeks for points to be redeposited if you cancel. Sure hope I like the flights we booked! Wish I had seen references to this quirky program, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
Availability is the name of the game. Sure, Emirates (or any airline) can pretend that just because they offer a single Saver fare in a 365 day period that they’re doing us a solid… but most of us recognize that for what it is… a farce.
The biggest bummer for me is still the high fees for business and I don’t see a way around that.
Can you book first class award seats or only business class award seats?
You can book 1st class if you have Emirates Elite status. Link to FM article on the subject is in the post.
Somewhat interesting: My auto upgrade for JFK -> Milan is still showing 39,000 and hasn’t been canceled.
I’ll keep enough Amex ready to transfer over if I need 45k for day-of upgrades, but these price changes may not impact tickets booked before the changes
The only way I flew EK F long-haul on a380 (with the shower!), day-of upgrade from J to F, quick transfer from Amex, using EK points. 72,500 for 14+ hours was epic, well-worth it.