Final Days to book Emirates First Class Awards
If you’ve never had the chance to fly Emirates First Class, it is about to be even more difficult in just under a week. The ability to book your first class ticket with miles will be kneecapped on April 1st of this year.
Emirates First Class is known for its over-the-top luxury and opulence in the air. Birds Eye Maple touches accent the gorgeous closed-door suites and Dom Pérignon champagne flows freely from flight attendants trained to respond to your every beck and call.
The price for such a flight? You could pay upwards of $10,000 for the right to experience such things. Or, if you used Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Miles, you could pay as little as $54.
That’s because Alaska Airlines partners with the Dubai based Emirates airline, and using your Alaska Airlines miles used to be the most accessible way to fly. Mind you, the prices are high starting at 150,000 each way, but no other airline in the USA makes it this easy to fly to Dubai and beyond.
Heck, it’s still one of only a couple of airlines that lets you shower while flying at 40,000 feet.
Emirates Shower Spa
Going, Going, Gone
When Alaska Airlines joins the OneWorld alliance on April 1st, the ability to use your miles to book First Class awards on Emirates will disappear. This could be because of their new partnership with Qatar, or perhaps Emirates was actually looking for a way to not allow third parties to have easy access to their awards.
Never fear however, because you can currently book first class flights all the way through the middle of February 2022.
And to make things even better… it looks like on certain dates and certain routes, Emirates is flying the A380 again! This means the onboard bar and onboard shower are back!
Flexibility
Remember that Alaska Airlines allows flexibility and redepositing of miles if you change your mind, so you can book without worry. But don’t wait. Get booking now!
If you need to top-off your Alaska Airlines balance, you can always move your Marriott Bonvoy points over to Alaska Airlines, or you can buy miles directly from the airline.
March 25, 2021
Flew it once, DXB-SFO on the A380. Was pretty amazing.
Have 1Million+ Alaska miles, but, they don’t allow non-North American routings.
Been traveling full time since early 2020, and not in the US anymore.
Yesterday booked DOH-DPS in Qatar Biz with AA miles… but can’t get EK unless routing back and forth to US.
Oh well, I got my one ride.
March 25, 2021
I mean. You could always book it back to the USA and plan a return trip to pick up on those great American staples you miss out on like mayonnaise
And slurpees LOL
March 25, 2021
Yup recently flew EK F (gamechanger suite) back in November DXB-JFK using AS miles!!! Now that EK award taxes/fees are more reasonable I don’t mind just transferring MR miles to skywards whenever I want to fly EK F again.
Note though that your EK skywards acct can only be linked to one external source at a time (i.e. UR or MR but not both at the same time.)
March 25, 2021
Oh that’s a good tip. I wonder why that is?
March 25, 2021
No idea. Perhaps something to do with Emireates Skywards IT. I read someplace where someone transferred MR points and UR points within minutes of each other to EK Skywards but only the MR points transferred. They had to call Skywards to unlink the MR account and then link their UR account and voila… the UR points transferred!
March 25, 2021
Can you use AA miles for them