Early this year, we lost the ability to redeem Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles for Emirates First Class awards. Most Emirates partners also lost this access and it wasn’t a big deal now that awards are just as reasonable to book with Emirates’ own miles (which you can easily transfer from several programs) and also because the rates had reached a staggering 150k each way to the Middle East.
With Alaska’s entry into oneworld complete, we knew we’d get access to Qatar Airways’ Qsuites soon enough, but that’s not yet live.
Two updates:
- Emirates will cease to be an earn or burn partner as of July 31st, 2021 (in its entirely). Award redemptions on Emirates are available through July 31, 2021. For future travel, changes made to a booked award on Emirates on or after August 1, 2021, will require cancellation of the award and re-booking on a different Alaska Airlines partner. If paying for a ticket, travel not completed by July 31st will earn no miles.
- Qatar Airways awards will come online in August 2021 (no exact date).
We also don’t know the award chart yet for Qatar.
So, if you need to fly to a destination you would ideally fly on these carriers, you’ll want to book Emirates now if you can (you can freely redeposit the awards later) and then see what happens with Qatar in terms of award pricing.
HT: Travel Codex
