Emirates raises premium cabin award prices by 15%, but adds one-way saver pricing

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.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.