Originally Posted by
ft101
From a lowly Gold, Platinum does seem to offer quite a lot, hence the big difference in miles to achieve it. No mileage expiry plus the higher Tier Bonus on miles and being higher in the op-up queue regardless of ticket type purchased would be valuable to me.
If you have a partner or whatever who would use it, the Gold Card nomination is another good one.
There's no additional bonus in tier miles based on membership level. Anyone who buys a J or F ticket gets the same number of tier miles. However, Skywards miles bonuses DO apply depending upon membership level.
I'm not sure that in reality platinum do get first bite for an upgrade. Emirates has intimated they do, but I suspect that in reality they have instructed the op-up gods to give upgrades to random blue, silver and gold members to give them a pleasant surprise and hopefully a future addiction to higher class seats. This makes good sense in any long term strategy to sell more premium seats.
I do feel that Emirates considers platinums as captured, and the aforementioned alternative strategy makes much more sense from a revenue perspective. They have rightly determined that rewarding the loyalty of people who will preferentially buy premium tickets anyway, does not increase the number of premium tickets sold. So they are covertly using the op-up contrary to how it is officially supposed to be allocated.... IMHO.