Based in Dubai, Emirates is the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates. For an airline based in a small country 7,000 miles away from the U.S., it offers hyper-powerful rewards that you should be collecting. It nearly appeared in the top ten on our list of the world’s best airline rewards programs (coming in at number 11 and taking second place in the Middle East and Africa).
Emirates partners with lots of airlines that can take you just about anywhere. With Emirates miles, you can book flights on Air Canada, Qantas, Japan Airlines, and many more. So even if you never plan to step foot on an Emirates plane, these rewards are still a good investment.
Table of contents
Overview of Emirates Skywards
Emirates is one of those rare “lap-of-luxury” airlines that actually tries to make everyone in the fuselage feel comfortable — including those in economy class. It’s nothing like the steerage aboard a U.S. carrier. The cabin is often much nicer, and you’ll almost certainly have more legroom than what you’d receive from American Airlines or United.
But again, you don’t have to shuffle onto an Emirates flight to strongly benefit from Emirates’ loyalty program. We’ll cover everything you need to know about the Emirates Skywards program, from earning and redeeming miles to elite status benefits and tips for finding the best award seats.
Credit card transfer partners of Emirates Skywards
Emirates partners with several transferable bank points, making Emirates miles some of the easiest to collect. If you’ve got any of the following reward currencies, you’ve got Emirates miles:
- American Express Membership Rewards
- Bilt Rewards
- Capital One miles
- Chase Ultimate Rewards points
- Citi ThankYou points
You can also convert Marriott Bonvoy points into Emirates miles at a 3:1 ratio. And when you transfer in 60,000-point increments, Marriott will give you 5,000 bonus miles. In other words, 60,000 Marriott points will get you 25,000 Emirates miles.
Airline partners of Emirates Skywards
Emirates isn’t a member of any official airline alliance, but it’s cobbled together an interesting mix of partners to create its own alliance of sorts. This gives you the ability to reach destinations and fly routes that Emirates itself doesn’t serve.
Here’s a look at all of Emirates’ airline partners:
| Air Canada | easyJet | Malaysia Airlines |
| Air Mauritius | flydubai | Qantas |
| Azul Linhas Aèreas Brasileiras | GOL | South African Airways |
| Bangkok Airways | Japan Airlines | TAP Portugal |
| Condor | Jetstar | United Airlines |
| Copa Airlines | Korean Air |
Just note that while this is a decent list of partners, you won’t be able to find comprehensive availability on some of them. In fact, award availability on some carriers is often frustratingly difficult to find.
What we love about Emirates Skywards
There are plenty of things to love about Emirates. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Premium seats are often plentiful when booking via Emirates.
- Emirates miles are easy to earn.
What we don’t love about Emirates Skywards
While Emirates can save you miles and money in some ways, it can cost you in others. Here are some of Emirates Skywards’ pitfalls:
- Some fares charge hundreds of dollars in taxes and fees.
- Long-haul flights often cost more than competing loyalty programs.
- Emirates doesn’t publish an award chart, just a Miles Calculator.
Emirates elite status tiers and how to earn them
To earn Emirates elite status, you’ll need to meet one of two annual requirements: Complete a specific number of flights on Emirates or flydubai; or rack up a certain amount of loyalty rewards called “Tier Miles” (which is equal to the number of Emirates miles you earn for paid flights). If you’re an Emirates credit cardholder, you can earn some status levels without ever stepping foot on a plane.
Let’s take a look at what you’ll get with each Emirates elite status level:
Blue
This is an intro status that comes with basic perks, such as:
- Free onboard Wi-Fi
- Free unlimited chat onboard
- Paid access to select lounges worldwide
- Special member offers
Silver
To earn Silver status, you’ll need to earn either 25,000 Tier Miles or take 25 flights in a calendar year. Or, you can open the Emirates Skywards Rewards World Elite Mastercard® and receive automatic Silver status for the first year. You can even keep the status by spending at least $20,000 on the card each anniversary year. Silver members receive all the benefits included with Blue, plus the following:
- 30% bonus on earned miles when flying Emirates and flydubai
- Complimentary seat selection
- Priority check-in with Emirates and flydubai
- Priority boarding
- Excess baggage allowance (12kg) with Emirates and flydubai
- Complimentary access to the Emirates Business Class lounge in Dubai
- Reciprocal earning opportunities with Marriott
Gold
To earn Gold status, you must earn 50,000 Tier Miles or take 50 flights in a calendar year. You can also open the Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard® to get automatic Gold status in year one. You can retain Gold status when you spend at least $40,000 on the card each anniversary year. Gold benefits include those included with Silver, with the addition of:
- 75% bonus on earned miles when flying Emirates and flydubai
- Priority service when contacting Emirates
- Reserved booking priority in economy class on flights that are sold out
- Excess baggage allowance (16kg) with Emirates and flydubai
- Extra checked bags (which vary by seat class)
- Complimentary access to select lounges worldwide
- Reciprocal elite status benefits with Marriott
- Priority baggage delivery with Emirates and flydubai
- Invites to exclusive Emirates-sponsored events
Platinum
Earning Emirates Platinum status is a chore. You’ll have to earn 150,000 Tier Miles and take at least one qualifying business or first-class flight. There’s no real shortcut to this status — aside from perhaps achieving Gold status from an Emirates credit card, which will give you a 75% bonus on the miles you earn.
Here are the benefits you can expect from this top-tier Emirates Platinum status:
- 100% bonus on earned miles when flying Emirates and flydubai
- Reserved booking priority in business class on sold-out flights
- “Last seat” Classic Flex Plus reward tickets
- Share Gold status with a friend or family member
- Emirates miles don’t expire (as long as you keep your status)
- Tier Miles rollover (anything over 150,000 miles will count toward next year’s status)
- Two yearly upgrades from business class to first class (and two more upgrades for half the miles)
- Complimentary home check-in in Dubai
- WhatsApp chat support
- Excess baggage allowance (20kg) with Emirates and flydubai
- Complimentary access to the Emirates First Class Lounge in Dubai
How to earn Skywards miles
Emirates has no shortage of ways to earn miles. Its large collection of partners gives you lots of ways to spend your way to a (nearly) free award flight. Here are the most popular ways to earn Emirates miles:
- Fly with Emirates. The number of miles you’ll earn depends on your route, fare type, and class of travel. You’ll also earn bonus rewards if you’ve got Emirates elite status. A bit complicated, but Emirates does offer a Miles Calculator to help you anticipate how many miles you need.
- Fly on partner airlines. You can credit the rewards you earn on partner flights to Emirates. You’ll earn up to 2.15 miles per mile flown, depending on the airline.
- Spend on credit cards. In addition to the aforementioned transferable rewards programs, such as Capital One Miles and Chase Ultimate Rewards, Emirates offers two cobranded credit cards: the Emirates Skywards Rewards World Elite Mastercard® and the Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard®. These cards earn Emirates miles directly.
- Book hotels. You can book hotels through Booking.com and earn 1 Emirates mile per euro spent. Alternatively, you can book a hotel stay through Emirates Skywards Hotels to earn up to 10,000 miles per night. Emirates also allows you to convert many different hotel rewards currencies to miles, often at a paltry rate.
- Rent a car. Emirates partners with Avis, Budget, Hertz, Sixt, Europcar, and CarTrawler. You can earn up to 6 miles per dollar spent or up to 1,200 miles per rental, depending on the agency you use.
- Shop online. Emirates has a few different ways to earn bonus rewards for your shopping, the most convenient being the Emirates Skywards Miles Mall. Navigate to your favorite retailer through the mall and you’ll automatically receive bonus miles at checkout.
Redeeming miles with Skywards
Emirates is one of the more unwieldy websites for finding your perfect itinerary. That’s because it doesn’t display Emirates and partner awards in the same search results. You’ve got to manually tell Emirates whether you’re looking for a flight with them or with a different carrier.
Case in point: When searching for an Emirates flight, simply tick the “Classic rewards” before searching. But when searching for a partner flight, you’ll have to click the link that says “Advanced search: multicity, promo codes, partner airlines.”
Doing this will send you to a second page where you’ll need to select “Book Classic Rewards Flight” and then “Search partner flights only.” Again, just because an airline shows award availability on its own website, that doesn’t mean you’ll find them on Emirates. For some reason, Emirates seems to receive less partner inventory than other programs.
In addition to flights, you can burn miles on hotels through Emirates’ online travel agency and through Emirates Vacations. You can also redeem them for non-travel related things like online shopping at the Skywards Miles Mall and the Emirates Official Store. But in terms of value per mile, this is a bad move. If you can help it, save your rewards exclusively for flights.
You can read our full guide for how to book Emirates flights with points for all the details.
How much are Skywards miles worth?
The return you’ll get for your Emirates miles totally depends on the specific redemption you use them for. Frustrating, I know. Here are some quick examples to help you better
As with nearly every reward currency, Emirates Skywards miles don’t have a fixed value. The return you’ll get from them depends entirely on how you use them. See for yourself: We’ll look at a few examples of what you can get with Skywards miles.
25,000 miles
For an economy flight from Newark (EWR) to Athens, Greece (ATH), you’ll pay 17,500 miles each way on Emirates. You’ll also be on the hook for $54 in taxes and fees.
The same seat costs $662 in cash. Deduct the award fees from this figure and you’ll save $608 by using miles. That gives you a value of 3.47 cents per mile.
50,000 miles
Emirates operates a route between Miami (MIA) and Bogota, Colombia (BOG). You’ll pay 52,500 miles and $106 for a one-way business-class ticket.
This angled lie-flat seat otherwise costs $1,168. Account for the $106 in award fees you’ll pay and your 52,500 Emirates miles will save you $1,062 — a value of 2.02 cents per mile.
100,000 miles
A round-trip economy ticket from Washington, DC (IAD) to Dubai (DXB) on Emirates costs 100,000 miles (plus around $457 in taxes and fees).
But this same trip costs just $897 in cash. Subtract the award fees, and you’ll receive a value of just $440 for your 100,000 miles. That’s a measly value of just 0.44 cents per mile.
As you can see, Emirates miles value has a high ceiling — and a low floor. If you aim for a value of at least 1.5 cents per mile, you’ll be getting fair value from your rewards.
The best Skywards redemptions
Emirates has a few of the best sweet spots in the world of points and miles, most of them involving ultra-luxurious business or first-class seats. These redemptions are a tad niche — but you’ll get high value for your rewards if you decide to book any one of them.
Emirates’ “game changer” first-class seat
Emirates currently offers what is arguably the best airplane seat. However, it only offers it on select Boeing 777s on select routes. If this isn’t an item on your points and miles bucket list, it should be.
These first-class seats aren’t cheap, and they come with astoundingly high taxes and fees. But the value is through the roof. For example, a one-way ticket between Chicago (ORD) and Dubai (DXB) costs 163,500 Emirates miles and $839.40 in taxes and fees.
However, the same itinerary costs over $15,000. This amounts to a value of more than eight cents per mile. Again, this isn’t a free flight. But the excellent service, bottomless Dom Perignon, caviar, etc., makes this a must-do if you can swing it.
Premium cabins between New York and Milan
Emirates flies its fabled A380 on a fifth freedom flight between New York (JFK) and Milan (MXP). That’s a big deal for a couple of reasons:
- It’s got a fancy bar at the back of the plane, exclusively for folks in business and first class.
- It’s got onboard showers, exclusively for folks in first class.
With those amenities, you’d think booking a seat with miles would be difficult. It’s actually not. Emirates typically has solid award availability, and the prices are palatable.
For nearly eight hours in a palatial business class seat, you’ll typically pay 87,000 miles and $106 in taxes and fees. This seat routinely costs over $2,800, giving you a value of more than three cents per mile.
If you’re willing to spend an extra 15,000 miles, you can experience first class with those onboard showers. First class tends to cost over $11,000, skyrocketing your value-per-mile to more than ten cents.
Upgrade onboard
To reiterate, Emirates’ first class is practically a thing of fables. The problem is that it’s often hard to find more than one or two award seats at a time. If you travel with friends or family, you’ll have to either be super lucky or super flexible with your travel dates to shoehorn everyone into first class.
The secret is to upgrade later. Emirates lets you upgrade from business to first class at the airport — or even while you’re onboard.
To use the same example itinerary as above, an upgrade from business class to first class between New York and Milan will cost as little as 39,000 miles.
You’ll ultimately pay more miles by upgrading instead of simply booking first class to begin with. But if there aren’t enough first-class seats at the time of booking, this is a great hack.
Tips for using Emirates Skywards miles
Emirates’ website and its policies are both a bit persnickety. Here are a few ways to have a smoother (and cheaper) booking experience:
Book round trip instead of one-way
Round-trip flights are the way to go when you fly Emirates.
Inexplicably, Emirates sometimes hides availability unless you book a roundtrip flight. If you’re searching for a specific day but the site shows no availability, change your one-way flight to roundtrip and see if inventory “magically” appears.
Similarly, Emirates offers “Saver” fares that appear only for round-trip travel. For example, the above flight between New York and Milan, which costs 87,000 miles each way, drops to just 54,000 miles when you book return travel.
Search your specific class of travel
With most airline websites, you can simply enter your travel date and route to see all the available seats on a flight. That’s not always the case with Emirates.
When you search for an award, be sure to specify the type of seat you want. Emirates doesn’t faithfully show multiple cabins after you select a flight — so neglecting to click “first class” will mean you (probably) won’t see any first-class availability.
Log out and back in if the search function gets wonky
When searching for partner availability, the site may tell you that certain routes aren’t available. It may even refuse to let you search popular hubs. You can strongarm Emirates into compliance (at least for a while) by logging out of your account and then back in.
Share "The Complete Guide to Emirates Skywards"
