Again you ask? Yes. Again 🙂
For context, early Saturday Emirates give notice that as of today, those without status would no longer be able to book First Class using Emirates Skywards miles.
We didn’t know for sure how this would affect partners that were currently selling award tickets on Emirates in First Class. I tended to assume not, given the onerous restrictions on its own members which you’d assume would be top priority.
I did think, for a second, that this might not affect Qantas partner awards on Emirates in First, but didn’t write that because I thought it was a slim chance. But my thinking was that back when Alaska and other partners at the time lost access to booking Emirates First, Qantas remained eligible for booking and, much like this article, came soon after the first article as a bit of a reprieve. This was back in 2020 but still stuck out in my mind.
Today, Executive Traveller confirmed that partners Air Canada and Qantas will retain Emirates First Class inventory when saver awards are made available. Air Canada, though, charging flexible prices (I was getting over 700,000 miles one way ORD-DXB) is pretty much unusable while Qantas is also quite pricey, but could be worthwhile at 170,800 points plus a $1,373 AUD each way.
Using the MilesTalk Matrix of “What Points Transfer Where?” we see that Amex, Citi, and Capital One can all transfer 1:1 to Qantas so, frankly, this isn’t as bad as we thought. Emirates wasn’t exactly cheap using its own program anyway, even if a bit less than Qantas.
Thoughts?
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