In May we reported that Emirates was no longer allowing members to use Emirates miles to book first class awards unless they had elite status. Separately, we reported that you can still book Emirates first class with Qantas or Air Canada miles. The thing we didn’t know for certain was whether it was still possible to book a business class flight with Emirates miles, and then use miles to upgrade to first class. The answer is yes! On May 31 my wife and I showed up at the Milan airport and successfully upgraded to first class at the check-in desk!
Emirates is unique in that they allow one-class mileage upgrades at the airport (or even on-board) as long as a seat has gone unsold (but you must book the original ticket through Emirates for this to work — business class awards booked with partner miles won’t work).
For the return from a trip to Italy, I had used Emirates miles to book my wife and I into business class on Emirates’ Milan to JFK flight. We got to the airport about 3 hours early to check in and asked to upgrade with miles. Luckily, seats in first class were still available and we were able to upgrade for 39,000 miles each!
I’ll write up a review of our flight soon. In the meantime, here are some Instagram reels of the experience:
- Emirates Lounge experience
- First class suite and Dom Pérignon
- Emirates first class shower spa
- Anniversary surprise
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Thanks for the info! Great picture of you by the way, you could advertise for EK.
Greg is married.
Great to hear. Thanks for updating on this. Sounds like an amazing anniversary trip!
Thanks for “taking one for the team” to confirm this option still exists 😉 While it is still possible, it may be worth noting that you’re not *guaranteed* the ability to upgrade at check-in simply because there are unsold seats at the time the check-in desk opens. At least in some circumstances, EK seems to be allowing you to join a waitlist but not confirming upgrades until closer to check-in. This was my experience back in January flying LAX-DXB — they let us join a list, but didn’t confirm the upgrade until shortly before boarding. We were told that they were holding the space to give priority to elites (and presumably to someone willing to pay cash, though they didn’t actually say that). I thought maybe it had just been a fluke, but I saw Kara (of Kara and Nate on YouTube) today mentioned in her Instagram story they just had the same thing when upgrading DXB-MAN.
I don’t see this as a huge deal — the ability to upgrade with miles is still fantastic — but it’s a nuance I haven’t generally seen mentioned, and it is relevant in terms of making the decision: (a) about transferring miles in hopes of securing an upgrade, as I think you need to have the miles to get on the list (I could be wrong about this — but in our case they confirmed we had the miles in our account before adding us to the list — I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t); and, (2) in terms of the ground experience if you are departing DXB, since you wouldn’t get first class lounge access without a confirmed upgrade, presumably. In our situation back in January we were departing LAX so ground experience was not a consideration, but there was only 1 seat available by the time they cleared upgrades — so I gave the upgrade to my partner and I was stuck with stranded EK miles. That was fine for me as we had plans later in the year when I expected to use (and have since used) those miles, but obviously that isn’t always going to be true for others.
Yeah I’m aware that happened to you. I also found one instance where someone wrote a blog comment somewhere about a similar experience. But for most people it seems to work the way it did for me. I can’t figure out what the difference is!
My speculation is that perhaps it is related to capacity (if only 1 or 2 seats are left they may be stricter than if more seats are available) or routing (I can see some logic to the idea that they might be more liberal with upgrades on 5th freedom routes than routes to/from DXB). But who knows. I’m glad to hear it is working for most people!
How much was the original ticket?
87K per person
plus how much in “fees”?
I don’t remember exactly but it was a little over $100 each I think
Do you have an opinion about whether this is the intended situation, or whether they will limit this in the future?
No idea.
Glad it worked out and happy anniversary!
Thanks!