Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Travel
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 12-05-2018, 08:17 PM
 
Location: Somewhere
4,198 posts, read 4,708,363 times
Reputation: 3179

Advertisements

I am thinking about taking a business class Emirates flight and have questions for the points/miles churners out there....




If I book a business class Emirates flight on the Alaska Airlines site, would it be eligible for an upgrade with Emirates miles? I tried selecting a flight on the Alaska Air site and was totally unable to tell the type of business seat I would be getting. I understand certain Emirates seats can be upgraded and others cannot.


Another naïve question...if I book an Emirates flight on the Alaska Air site, will the booking show up through the Emirates site since my Emirates FF# would be associated with the booked flight?


I have some Alaska Airlines points which is why I wanted to book through them. But I also have some AmEx points I have been saving that I "may" use to upgrade one leg of the flight.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 12-06-2018, 03:22 PM
 
Location: Hougary, Texberta
9,019 posts, read 14,232,481 times
Reputation: 11030
Well, first off, you can't book Emirates flights on Alaskan's site for revenue flights. If you want to book Emirates, go to their site, and see if you can get your business class with points/miles. Availability can be challenging at times.


To use Alaska miles, you're looking at 82,500 each way in business on EK.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-10-2018, 12:44 PM
 
Location: Somewhere
4,198 posts, read 4,708,363 times
Reputation: 3179
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeyyc View Post
Well, first off, you can't book Emirates flights on Alaskan's site for revenue flights. If you want to book Emirates, go to their site, and see if you can get your business class with points/miles. Availability can be challenging at times.


To use Alaska miles, you're looking at 82,500 each way in business on EK.
I'm sorry. I'm not understanding. Maybe I don't get what you mean by the "for revenue" part.


Alaska Airlines and Emirates are partners. If you go onto the Alaska Airlines site, you can use Alaska Airlines miles to purchase a ticket on Emirates from the US to Dubai. It's 42.5K miles one way for Economy versus 82.5K miles one way for business and 150k miles one way for first last time I checked last week.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-10-2018, 03:43 PM
 
Location: Hougary, Texberta
9,019 posts, read 14,232,481 times
Reputation: 11030
Right. So you can use Alaskan points for reward purchases. For revenue means money. You can't buy an EK ticket with money through the Alaskan site, only by using Alaskan points. What do you mean by what kind of business class seat? There's only one business class. Seating style may be dependent on aircraft, but there's not subdivisions within the class. Reward flights generally can't be upgraded further. Also your FF# is really irrelevant, as reward redemptions are non-rev, and earn no points.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-11-2018, 10:45 AM
 
Location: Seattle
1,882 posts, read 2,068,079 times
Reputation: 4894
It sounds like you want to use Alaska miles to book a seat on an Emirates flight, then use Emirates miles to upgrade to a higher class of service. If that's what you want to do, then the answer is NO, you can't use one airline's miles to upgrade a seat secured with another airline's miles. If you want to ride in a premium cabin using miles, then you need to use one airline's mileage program. In this case it sounds like you'd have to use Alaska's. You can't combine miles from two programs into one flight.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-11-2018, 03:22 PM
 
Location: Somewhere
4,198 posts, read 4,708,363 times
Reputation: 3179
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeyyc View Post
Right. So you can use Alaskan points for reward purchases. For revenue means money. You can't buy an EK ticket with money through the Alaskan site, only by using Alaskan points.
Correct. I know and should have specified that in my original post as I was not clear that my plan was to purchase an Emirates flight using Alaska miles on Alaska airlines.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeyyc View Post
What do you mean by what kind of business class seat? There's only one business class. Seating style may be dependent on aircraft, but there's not subdivisions within the class.
This is what I was referring to:
https://www.emirates.com/english/hel...-flight-reward

^And I think I'm just confusing myself.

Because Emirates offers Saver, Flex and Flex Plus rewards, I was wondering if I use Alaska miles to buy an Emirates flight, is it a "Saver" ticket..? I'm assuming since I'd be using Alaska miles, it's none of the three. Meaning, if I had used Emirates miles and got a Saver business seat, I could have one stopover. But if I buy the business seat on Emirates via Alaska, I couldn't have a stopover as it wouldn't even fall within the "Saver" category? Does that make sense? Maybe I'm missing something and making this wayyyyyyy complicated.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeyyc View Post
Reward flights generally can't be upgraded further.
Hhhmmm...I don't think I knew this. This is what I'm trying to do.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeyyc View Post
Also your FF# is really irrelevant, as reward redemptions are non-rev, and earn no points.
I know rewards flights don't earn points actually. However, originally I was wondering if my booking would show up in the Emirates system online when I log in there after booking through Alaska. I know this is unlikely but was curious. After I book through Alaska, if I call Emirates, Emirates will be able to confirm my booking information. So it's not far fetched maybe possibly it would show up under my Emirates account after I've booked the flight with Alaska? I was thinking my FF# might trigger the info being available in my Emirates account but on second thought that doesn't really make any sense. Still wondering however if after the booking is done if it will show up since Alaska and Emirates are partners and the information has to be linked somehow once the flight is arranged. I wanted to know this to see if I could then use Emirates points to upgrade the existing flight in the Emirates system. But even if the flight did show up in my Emirates account it wouldn't matter because you're saying I can't upgrade a reward flight anyway.

Anyways, I think I need to (1) purchase enough miles to buy outright an "already upgraded" ticket with Alaska airlines on Emirates and (2) use the miles in my Emirates account to purchase the leg of the flight I will not be upgrading. That way I can still use my Emirates points; it just won't be for the upgrade; I'd be using Alaska points for that. What I originally was going to do was buy a round trip ticket on Emirates through Alaska Airlines and subsequently upgrade one leg of the flight using Emirates miles.

Yes, I know, I sound like I'm smoking something over here with all of this and probably nothing I just said makes any sense. It gets complicated trying to in essence "combine points" from two carriers; in this case it means buying two one ways really I think.

*Lastly, Alaska Airlines has an up to 50% off sale on their miles right now.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-11-2018, 03:23 PM
 
Location: Somewhere
4,198 posts, read 4,708,363 times
Reputation: 3179
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gardyloo View Post
It sounds like you want to use Alaska miles to book a seat on an Emirates flight, then use Emirates miles to upgrade to a higher class of service. If that's what you want to do, then the answer is NO, you can't use one airline's miles to upgrade a seat secured with another airline's miles. If you want to ride in a premium cabin using miles, then you need to use one airline's mileage program. In this case it sounds like you'd have to use Alaska's. You can't combine miles from two programs into one flight.
Yes you are absolutely correct in what I'm trying to do.

And the above poster mentioned I (generally) can't use miles to upgrade a flight purchased with miles actually... :/
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-12-2018, 01:59 PM
 
Location: Sunshine state
2,539 posts, read 3,719,851 times
Reputation: 4001
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gardyloo View Post
It sounds like you want to use Alaska miles to book a seat on an Emirates flight, then use Emirates miles to upgrade to a higher class of service. If that's what you want to do, then the answer is NO, you can't use one airline's miles to upgrade a seat secured with another airline's miles. If you want to ride in a premium cabin using miles, then you need to use one airline's mileage program. In this case it sounds like you'd have to use Alaska's. You can't combine miles from two programs into one flight.
What Gardyloo said above.

Also, once you redeem a seat using miles, you can't upgrade it any further. The only way to upgrade a seat with miles is if you pay for the original seat with money, then use your miles to upgrade to business. So essentially you will need to pay for economy and then use your miles to upgrade to business.

Know that upgrading a seat with miles per my scenario above does not guarantee that you'll get the upgrade (the airlines will tell you that it's on available basis - they only have maybe 2 or 4 seats per flight available for upgrades, the rest they obviously prefer to sell it to paying customers). Depending on your FF status, the airlines may not even tell you whether you get the upgrade or not up to boarding time. They'll return your miles if you don't get the upgrade.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-14-2018, 05:34 PM
 
2,887 posts, read 5,117,723 times
Reputation: 3663
Quote:
Originally Posted by southkakkatlantan View Post
Because Emirates offers Saver, Flex and Flex Plus rewards, I was wondering if I use Alaska miles to buy an Emirates flight, is it a "Saver" ticket..? I'm assuming since I'd be using Alaska miles, it's none of the three. Meaning, if I had used Emirates miles and got a Saver business seat, I could have one stopover. But if I buy the business seat on Emirates via Alaska, I couldn't have a stopover as it wouldn't even fall within the "Saver" category? Does that make sense? Maybe I'm missing something and making this wayyyyyyy complicated.
Indeed you are making it too complicated. You are using Alaska miles so whether or not you are allowed a stopover solely depends on Alaska’s FF program rules when flying on partner airlines. What SQ offers to its own frequent fliers is completely irrelevant to you. These categories apply to people who will pay for their flight with SQ miles not Alaska miles.

If you want to use miles from the two programs you will need to have (at least) two separate tickets during your trip. Do not call them ‘legs’ or segments — they will be entirely independent from each other so the right word is ‘ticket’.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-15-2018, 10:19 AM
 
Location: Somewhere
4,198 posts, read 4,708,363 times
Reputation: 3179
Quote:
Originally Posted by barneyg View Post
Indeed you are making it too complicated. You are using Alaska miles so whether or not you are allowed a stopover solely depends on Alaska’s FF program rules when flying on partner airlines. What SQ offers to its own frequent fliers is completely irrelevant to you. These categories apply to people who will pay for their flight with SQ miles not Alaska miles.

If you want to use miles from the two programs you will need to have (at least) two separate tickets during your trip. Do not call them ‘legs’ or segments — they will be entirely independent from each other so the right word is ‘ticket’.
Ok.

So I ended up purchasing and using Alaska Airlines miles to purchase two separate one-way Emirates tickets. One ticket is in Economy on Emirates from the US to Dubai. The second ticket is in a higher class from Dubai back to the US.

I needed to get a second flight between Dubai and another city so I had transferred my AmEx rewards to Emirates and used the Emirates miles to purchase the other flight which is a round-trip economy ticket. The round-trip ticket is for a flight that leaves out of Dubai 4 days after arriving in Dubai so no stopover concerns.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Travel
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top