Hey everyone, Im struggling to find availability Emirates redemption availability from Birmingham to Dubai in economy and business. I can convert miles to JAL via AMEX and im looking for availability on the Air Alaska site and the only availability that i seem to be finding is to North America. Im not sure if im doing anything wrong so has anyone got any tips?
Alaska will only show segments that originate or terminate in the United States, I would suggest you try the Qantas site, I've also heard good things about Award Nexus but have not used it myself. I'm curious, how do you convert miles to JAL via AMEX? Do you meant SPG?
There's a decent guide here - basically you want to be looking for Classic Rewards space on the Emirates site, as JAL should be able to access the same: http://canadiankilometers.boardingarea.com/2017/08/23/book-emirates-jal-miles/ Alaska is very particular about the specific regions it allows you to redeem between, so not usually the best for a general award search. Hope that helps!
Since JAL seems to be adding fuel surcharges to Emirates rewards, it may not end up being a particularly rational use of Amex/SPG points.
That's a great read so thanks for that. I'm bit worried about the fuel surcharges in the comments so might need to do a dummy booking to find out
Do you know how much the fuel surcharges are? I have noticed that taxes for Emirates flights departing from UK have shot up recently
I've just joined Qantas looking for business reward seat availability. Btw I couldn't find Birmingham to Dubai on the booking page so opted for Heathrow instead. It's showing "business deal" and "business saver" seats so I'm not which one of these qualifies for partner redemptions on JAL. Furthermore, I haven't got enough skyward miles to check business classic reward availability on the Emirates website. I didn't realise how tricky it would be to find availability!
Well, I did a quick dummy search on ITA Matrix. A return economy ticket BHX-DXB would have £275 in taxes and surcharges. (the actual fare component can be quite low) Business Class would have £780! Assuming that JAL is now passing this along, there is very little chance of it being worthwhile to use Amex points for a reward on Emirates.
P.S. What you really want is to book an Etihad (no surcharges) reward using ANA or AA miles. Abu Dhabi airport isn't that much further away from the touristy bits of Dubai - and you get a free chauffeur transfer in Business and First. (although no BHX) https://insideflyer.co.uk/2017/04/fly-etihad-airways-using-miles-part-1/
I just did a quick Google search on ANA and found this - "From Friday, December 8, 2017, new reservations and ticketing of ANA Mileage Club award tickets will be temporarily suspended on some routes of Etihad Airways (EY)"
