uclacolumbiaunc

any way to get around it to not pay fuel surcharge?

There is a $700 US dollar fuel charge after paying 117500 miles for a business class seat from LAX to Mumbai.

With the outrageous fuel surcharge, miles are basically worth very little especially if you're redeeming for economy class seat.

ft101

Buy economy and use miles to upgrade.

uclacolumbiaunc

Economy upgrade to business isn't available from LAX to DXB.

ukdoctor

????. I assume you mean that seats are not available on the days you want to travel . If you want to be sure that you get to travel J , you should book Y tickets on flights where there is availability for upgrading. Otherwise you have to keep checking and hope that they release more seats for upgrades.

I am also not sure what you mean by saying that there is no Economy upgrade available but at the same time you are complaining of the high fuel surcharge on reward tickets.

Both the business rewards and upgrades from Y to J come from the same pool of seats (D) and therefore there should be Y to J upgrades available on any flight that has a business saver reward availability.

uclacolumbiaunc

I already checked with Emirates.

There is no upgrade available if you buy economy ticket and use miles to upgrade from economy to business class on the flight from LAX to DXB.

ukdoctor

Possibly as there is only one flight a day AFAIK. Did you find any business saver reward availability though?( that was the topic of this thread that you started).

uclacolumbiaunc

Yes. She said flex award is available at 117500 miles plus $725 tax and fees, including fuel surcharge.... if she didn't mention saver award, then I guess only flex award is available, right?

$725 fee on a business award ticket is expensive, even more expensive than British Airways' London airport taxes!

Havoc10G

I think BA also charge a fuel surcharge. BA 'led' the way in bolting on additional charges on tickets and I think they still have it although hate flown BA intercon for a while now.

ft101

I can see upgrade availability from Y to J (and J to F) for LAX - DXB on the EK site, although not much of it.

Where I think your problem is being compounded is that you're wanting a single ticket. Saver Rewards are only available if you're buying a round trip so won't show up on your Reward query.

I've travelled recently on a single ticket (on a different route) and upgraded successfully so it can be done if D class is available.

It appears more likely that seats are not available on the day you want to travel, as stated above, or a combination of that and the EK call centre operator not knowing the system and how to check it.

uclacolumbiaunc

Where did u see the upgrade availability on Emirates' website? I couldn't find any link or page that displays the upgrade availability.

I definitely plan on traveling one way, but I can buy a round-trip economy and upgrade only the outbound flight.

I plan to travel on 9/16/2014. I was told by the EK reservation agent that entire week has no upgrade availability.

ft101

You can check for upgrade availability by searching for Reward availability. If a Business Saver Reward exists, then so does an upgrade from economy to business, as they both come from the "D" bucket.

Your search has to be for a round trip as a single will force the system to offer Flex Rewards only, so put in a dummy return date.

However, I've just looked from a week before your date until a week after and there is only availability on Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd September. Do your plans have flexibility enought to change to either of these dates?

You would also have to check that any ticket you bought would be upgradeable - many now cannot be upgraded until check in opens. You can force this Flex type ticket if the system only offers Saver type, but there is a price premium involved.

Relying on last minute availability might not be a good bet as there's nothing for the upcoming few days, although I don't know if there's a pattern there.

Do you have any EK status as Silver or above will allow you to do an on-board upgrade.

As you can see, there's lots of permutations and "ifs" and "buts". You have to get your head around them all to get the deal that suits you best.

trigleek

Do you still see the fuel surcharge? I think EK have stopped imposing fuel surcharges on its routes originating from USA.

ft101

What makes you say that?

I've just done a dummy booking on the reward ticket being discussed here and, as said above, it comes out with > $700 US "Carrier Imposed Charge".

A351

EK will let you offset part of the fuel surcharge with (additional) Skyward miles and I have done that a number of times. Tax will have to be paid for.

Over the past 5 or 6 years, EK have pretty much halved the miles & tier miles they award for flights, increased the miles needed for a free ticket and imposed tax and fuel surcharge. I remember getting EK reward tickets just with miles but that was a very long time ago! Also, I now need to take nearly twice as many flights in a year to retain my Gold status.

If the airlines feel we should pay for fuel separately, I wonder how long it would be before they separate out all the charges (financing, cost of crew, maintenance, refurbishing, etc) and ask us to pay for those separately as well.

No fuel, no flight so it should be part of the fare! Yes, I think BA started it.

trigleek

You are right. I just made a dummy booking from my skywards account LAX-DXB-BOM and see the > $700 "carrier imposed charge".

However, when you make a regular paid booking, in business class, from LAX to BOM on the EK website, there are no "carrier imposed charges", just taxes/fees that are less than $50.

For a BOM-DXB-LAX regular paid flight, however, there are "carrier imposed charges" more than $400.

EK is doing something odd here. :/