(EXPIRED) Emirates: Save $75-$1,000 On Round-Trip Flights From US With Promo Code USAMX19

Emirates is offering discounts ranging from $75 for economy class flights up to $1,000 for first class flights when booking a round trip that originates in the US.

In many cases you won’t get the discount as the cheapest fare class seems to be excluded, but I was (finally!) able to find at least one example where the USAMX19 promo code can save you money.

The Deal

• Save on qualifying round-trip flights with Emirates when you book and pay with any American Express Card and use promo code USAMX19.
  • $75 off economy class
  • $500 off business class
  • $1,000 off first class
• Direct link to offer.

Key Terms

• Book from May 20, 2019 through August 31, 2019 for travel between May 21, 2019 and April 30, 2020.
• Depart from any Emirates gateway in the U.S., travel to the Emirates destination of your choice.
• Must pay with an American Express card.

Quick Thoughts

I was initially struggling to find any value with this deal as even when selecting seemingly-qualifying flights, the discount wasn’t being applied.

When searching for flights, Emirates highlights eligible flights with this sun icon:

Doing a search for Chicago to Dubai brought up a number of options with the sun icon, so I chose the following round trip:

So far so good – all classes had the sun icon, so I thought I was good to go. When selecting the economy class fares, I was expecting the total to be $774.13 seeing as the total before the discount was due to be $849.13. However, the total remained at $849.13.

Wondering if the $75 discount was baked into that price after all, I checked Google Flights. That was showing a fare of $850 for the exact same itinerary, so the discount was clearly not being applied.

I had a similar issue on a number of other routes, so figured that the promo code wasn’t working properly. When doing another search later on though, I discovered what was causing the problem.

Emirates has a number of different economy fare classes, with the ‘Special’ (i.e. cheapest) fare class appearing to be excluded due to the lack of a sun icon. The next cheapest eligible fare class was more than $225 more expensive each way, so the $75 discount was virtually worthless at that point unless you wanted to pay an extra $375 round trip in order to have the ability to upgrade to business class for 95,000 miles each way. (Side note: please don’t do that).

With the ‘Special’ fare class not being so special when it comes to this promotion, your opportunity to save money on Emirates flights is limited. I was able to find one example though where the USAMX19 can actually save you money.

When searching from D.C. to Manila, there were round trip flights in economy from $969.63. Despite those flights having the sun icon next to them, I didn’t hold out much hope for getting the discount on this route either due to the not-so-special exclusion.

This particular route didn’t have a ‘Special’ fare class though. The three economy fare options it did provide all had the sun icon, so I selected the cheapest options both to and from Manila.

Finally, some success! The $969.63 fare was reduced to $894.63, with the $75 discount being noted in the trip summary box.

A fare of $894.63 including the $75 discount is all well and good, but not if you can get similar flights for cheaper on another airline. In this case though, Emirates really was offering the cheapest option:

Note that in order to receive the discount, your flights have to originate in the US. It’s therefore not possible to get a decent discount on shorter (and thereby cheaper) routes like Dubai to Bangkok.

If you’re planning a trip from the US to the Middle East or Asia before April 2020, it’s worth keeping this promotion in mind if you notice that Emirates flights are already priced competitively compared to other airlines; just don’t be too surprised if their cheapest flights happen to be ‘Special’.

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