Seems there's not much information around online for booking Jetstar flight using Emirates miles and how the process works. I have today successfully booked a flight from MEL -> AYQ using miles (and paying the taxes). It was a painless if a little slow and manual process.
While I realise this is not usually a good use of miles it works for my personal situation, I probably could have got better value for my miles by using them for upgrades but I decided to go with this reward option.
To book the flight I:
1) Checked how many points would likely be required using this
chart
2) I then filled in the Web Form found by clicking the "Spend Miles" button on the same page, giving:
- Names of passengers
- Departure and Arrival airports
- Flight Number (if known - which I did as i checked schedules on the Jetstar's website)
- Times of flights
This is not an automatic form but it is forwarded to an Emirates Customer Service agent to manually look in to
3) About 3 hours later I received an email saying an award was available, for 10,225 points and AED150 per person and giving me a Booking Code.
Note - they gave me the taxes in AED not AUD as I was expecting, this made it look very poor value as the first time I looked I misread AED and AUD!
4) You cannot actually confirm and pay the taxes online, I had to call my local (UK) Emirate customer service number. By giving the agent the Booking Reference he could see all the details.
5) I'm not sure why, but the actual call took about 15 minutes. The agent had to manually re-enter everything and double check with me (Even though he could see the details already) and said he had to manually calculate the taxes. Not sure why this was necessary as the calculated taxes were exactly what was in the email - but I was at least charged in my local currency (GBP). Also the agent seemed as frustrated as me with the need to re-enter everything, I'm guessing it was a different sytem with no process for transferring the details.
6) As soon as I paid the taxes on my credit card via the phone an email arrived with my tickets and itineary and the points left my Skywards accounts.
All in all it was a painless but long process, but I did manage to spend just over 20,000 to save over £170 on the cost of booking the flights directly with Jetstar when you take into account the flights come with 30kg of baggage which is pay extra on Jetstar normally.
I can also view the flights on Jetstar's website (the email from Emirates gives both a Emirates and a Jetstar reference code) but worryingly "no baggage" is stated. Both the e-ticket and the Emirates agents assure me 30KG is included. The same issue exists with a QANTAS reward booking I did through Emirare.com so I guess we'll wait and see!
Hopefully this will be useful to someone in the future.