FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - My First Class Award Booking Experience

Sep 25, 2022 | 10:52 am

ckaught78

Join Date: Dec 2009

Posts: 153

My First Class Award Booking Experience

Having just finished up an amazing trip to Jordan in Emirates First both ways, I thought I would share my experience with what it cost me and what I went through to get there. Given flight loads are increasing daily and mileage redemption rates/fees have increased since I originally booked your costs will be higher, but hopefully I can provide a few data points that some might find useful.

When it comes to reward bookings I tend to book in advance and am always looking for a good business class deal. Last October I started looking for business class awards for this year and saw that Emirates had wide open business saver availability in 2022 to almost everywhere. Having wanted to always go to Jordan for some time, I was able to book two roundtrip saver awards in J for my wife and I from SFO for 340,000 skyward miles + $1,116.14 USD in fees. I transferred the miles over from Chase and Amex, both of which were instantaneous.

Given the flight arrived into DXB at 740p and the earliest connection to AMM wasn’t until 2pm the following day we were able to take advantage of the Dubai Connect Stopover program, which was great because it gave us a free hotel and ride from the airport and while I have been to Dubai a few times over the years, but wife had not so we would be able to do a quick tour.

In mid-December 2021 upgrade availability from J to F for both directions became available. At the time I only had enough miles between my various credit cards to upgrade one way so I transferred the miles into my skyward account and decided to upgrade our return AMM-SFO for the discounted through rate of 171,600. So at least half of my journey was going to be in F. While the outbound also had availability at the time I didn’t have enough miles to also book that. And why I decided to upgrade the return is that I wanted to be as refreshed as possible when I got home, although had I to do it over again I would have chosen the outbound.

Now I needed to replenish my miles in order to get enough for the outbound upgrade. Playing the credit card game I signed up for the Emirates credit card, Capital One Venture X, and Citi Premier; all which are Skyward transfer partners. After a few months, mid-February 2022, I was able to meet the spend requirements to qualify for the signup bonuses and eventually had enough points accumulated for another upgrade to First. Unfortunately by this time there was no longer any upgrade availability to F, but using Expert Flyer, I could see that no F seats were taken, although 7 months before our journey, but figured I'd have a good chance as our travel dates got closer. Given this I took the chance and transferred enough miles into my Skywards accounts and signed up for upgrade alerts and auto-upgrade (both of which turned out to be worthless) and hoped for the best.

Given I had heard mixed results with both upgrade alerts and auto-upgrade I religiously checked the app every day with no luck until mid-August, a little less than a month before our trip. I was in a taxi coming home from the airport from another trip around 10p, opened up the Emirates app, and the DXB-AMM leg was available to upgrade so I went for it and upgraded both of us to for 39,000. This was a case where neither the upgrade alert or auto-upgrade worked. Since both legs weren’t available to upgrade and I had only enough points in my account for the through rate I ended up transferring another 32,000 over to get my balance up to the 163,800 which was what the upgrade was going to cost for SFO-DXB. While I was taking a risk of it not happening, I kept checking Expert Flyer and the F loads for my day of travel were really light; only 4 of 14 so figured my chances were good.

Now the first little hiccup. There are two flights each day from AMM-DXB; one departing at 2am and one at 6pm. The 2am flight is supposed to be a 777-300ER while the 6pm flight in on the 380. We were booked on the 2am 777 flight arriving into DXB around 6am and then connecting to our SFO flight departing at 910a. When checking the app for upgrades one evening a week prior to departure I saw we had an aircraft change from the 777-300er to the 777-200. Because the 200 only has two classes we were downgraded from F to J. I was bummed, I was hoping for F the whole way. Given it was late I decided not to call them, but instead reach out via Twitter. Knowing that there was the 6pm A380 flight the evening before I asked them to change my tickets to that flight and put us back in first. The rep initially said he couldn’t that, but I kept insisting, pointing out they were the ones who changed aircraft and eventually he relented and was able to change our AMM-DXB flight from the 2am flight on the 20th to the 6pm flight on the 19th and keep us in first, now on the A380. The added benefit to this was that now we had an overnight layover that qualified for the Dubai Connect stopover program and instead of trying to stay up late in AMM for the 2am flight and getting no sleep we’d get into DXB at 10p and have a decent nights rest of a decent hotel.

So now back to upgrading our final SFO-DXB leg. I kept checking the Emirates app each day, sometimes multiple times per day, but still no upgrades were showing up as our departure date was getting closer at closer. Expert Flyer was still showing good availability, but at this point I had it in my mind that I would just get to the airport early and try to get us upgraded at check-in. Then at 5 days before our departure date our luck changed. I checked the Emirates app earlier that evening with no luck, but while lying in bed around 1030p not able to fall asleep, I decided to pick up my phone and look one more time and what do you know, the outbound SFO-DXB upgrade became available so I quickly booked it for 163,800 miles. We would now be flying in F in an A380 on all four legs of our trip. Of course, once again neither the upgrade alert of auto-upgrade worked even though I had the miles. Oh well. The only downside at this point was that by upgrading both legs separately I wasn’t able to get the upgraded through rate, but I knew that was a possibility and one I was willing to accept, however I wasn’t going to let it stop me from trying to get the miles back.

The next day I got on twitter again to see if they could get me the discounted rate and refund the difference of 31,200 miles back into my account. They were very adamant that this couldn’t be done and while I kept pushing the rep wouldn’t budge. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. A couple days later I decided to call up Emirates where I asked to be transferred to their Skywards award booking department. I am not sure if I got lucky, but I told the rep what I was looking for and he stated he would see what he could do. It took almost 10 minutes, but he was able to reprocess the separate outbound upgrades as one and when he came back on the phone to tell me he was done, I refreshed my account and saw the 31,200 miles were back in it. Mission successful.

Another slight hiccup, when we checked in for our return flights in AMM our hotel certificates were for Le Meridian, but when we arrived at the Chauffeur desk in Dubai they said it as full and changed us to the JW Marriott which was downtown about a 20min drive away. This cut into our sleep time a little given the distance, but while the JW Marriot was packed and it took a little time to get checked in, the room was comfortable and we got a good rest before heading back to the airport.

So, in total, for both my wife and I we were able to fly SFO-DXB-AMM roundtrip in F for 683,200 miles + $1,116 USD or 341,600 + $558 USD each. For a revenue ticket that was booking at $42,000 USD that works out to around $0.06 per mile. While not my best redemption rate ever, for the class of service and what I was getting/got, I was happy. The best part is I was able to keep it all a surprise from my wife. She new we were flying business, but not first. When we got to the airport and I walked us over to the first class lounge she indicated to me we were in the wrong line to which I responded, no we aren’t. She was delighted.

What an experience. I probably ate my weight in caviar and drank my weight in Dom, especially on the flight home from DXB where they had P2. For both of us though the best part of the experience were the showers on the A380. Being able to get off a 15 hour fight fully refreshed was amazing and is the one thing I would say that Emirates First has going for it that the others don’t. Having had the opportunity to fly La Premiere earlier in the year from CDG to SFO I’d say that was a better overall experience especially on the ground, but the showers, beverage selection, and friendliness of the crew make Emirates First a close second and a good option if available.

Here are a few pics from our journey, apologies for being out of order: