Using OnePass for Emirates Tix?
 

I am trying to secure one reward ticket to HAM in Business Class. I was told by the Continental rep today that she has never been successful in booking an Emirates partner reward. After asking her to check, she came back and said Emirates does not allow CO reward tickets on their JFK-HAM flights. Is this correct or a load of...? Has anyone ever booked a CO reward on Emirates? Thanks.

I have redeemed CO miles for J class travel on the EK JFK-DBX-JFK nonstops. Since you are trying to redeem a North America to Europe reward, however, EK might not be a valid carrier for that type of reward (series 6). See http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...1BB171927D98FF.

Continental Airlines OnePass rewards are valid for travel on Continental Airlines, Continental Express, Continental Micronesia, Continental Connection carriers, SkyTeam Alliance: Air France, Aeroflot Russian Airlines, Aeroméxico, Alitalia, CSA Czech Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Delta Connection (excluding Delta Connection flights operated by American Eagle), Delta Shuttle, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Korean Air, Northwest Airlines and Northwest Airlink. Other valid OnePass reward partners include: AeroRepública, Air Europa, Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air, American Eagle, Amtrak, Cape Air, Copa Airlines, Emirates, Hawaiian Airlines, Island Air, and Virgin Atlantic.

Not all rewards are valid on all airlines.

That must be the wording that I missed. Any thoughts as to the best alternative carrier? CO appears to be a lost cause due to my non-status and I'd prefer to spend 80K vs 100K.

IIRC 80k will secure a C seat on KLM over to Europe. As you know it's 100k for CO, DL, NW and VS.

80k will get one an AF ticket, as well. DL is 90k (series 6E).

Sort of OT, but does "O" class AF on expertflyer equate into available biz reward seats through Continental or is this a reward class just for Air France FFers?

O works for Continental as well. That is the class you go looking for if you want to redeem One Pass Miles for a free business class ticket on AF.

Really? DL is only 90k? I stand corrected.

Glad to see they haven't jacked up the price on DL...yet.

I have had sucess using EK (though I have not tried Europe - only JNB). From what I have been told, the process is quite slow.

Step 1 - CO requests seats from EK.
Step 2 - EK confirms seats (this can happen in seconds or hours - up to 24 hours)
Step 3 - CO confrims booking
Step 4 - wait 24 hours
Step 5 - CO can ticket

I STRONGLY suggest that you only attempt this with the SLC call center. Both IAH and TPA seem unwilling or unable to handle this much work.

As for AF, "O" is the correct bucket and there are often (in my experience) seats available.

Good luck.

Nw is also 80k. Is Emirates 100k or 80k?

EK is 120k to the Middle East and Africa.

Emirates recently added a JFK-HAM nonstop service. It is this flight that I was hoping to get for 80K. I guess I'll have to try a different agent before giving up and going with AF/KLM.

Please let us know if you're able to book it.

Im trying to redeem from London to Male (Maldives) on Emirates for the last week of July.

Any ideas the best way to go about it?

How many points is business class?

Based on the results from the new Interactive Reward Chart it looks like EK is a valid partner on Europe to Asia (Indian Ocean), which includes the Maldives. It says 100K miles on a Series 9B reward.

As for redeeming it, I would imagine that a call to the OnePass redemption office in the UK is in your future.

S.

By signing up for the Emirates Skywards program, you can check availabiliy for EK award seats online. Now, OnePass and Skywards inventory do not match up 100% of the time for EK flights, but it's a safe bet that flights without inventory in Skywards will not be available for OnePass.

I had success recently at using CO miles for an Emirates award from VIE-BKK return. The process is as SeattleBH describes earlier, but I had pretty good luck just picking flights that showed good availability using the KVS tool. In every case, if Emirates did not immediately (within seconds) deny the reward, it wound up being confirmed at the 24 hour mark.

Sorry but I have no insight into the JFK-HAM routing.

What's the KVS tool?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=319244

Basically, it is a fare availability tool that is widely used among the flyertalk community.

I believe Heathrow Guy posted in another thread that is it 80k miles for a EK ticket Europe to India/Africa in Business.

I found flights on emirates.com for award tickets, now I just need to check with continental.

I just wanted to see if anyone could confirm that it is 80k miles for Europe to Seychelles on Emirates?

Thanks much,

Timothy

BTW the flights that I found with availability in Business class are below. If anyone has a minute and could check if 2 seats are available on these flights in Business using continental miles I would really appreciate it. I am in the south of France without a landline at the moment.

Flights selected so far

Flight 1 of 3
EK076

08 Nov 07 9:05 pm departs Paris (CDG) Business
09 Nov 07 6:40 am arrives Dubai (DXB)
Non-stop

Connecting to

EK707
09 Nov 07 10:35 am departs Dubai (DXB) Business
09 Nov 07 3:05 pm arrives Seychelles (SEZ)
Non-stop



Flight 2 of 3
EK708

17 Nov 07 1:15 am departs Seychelles (SEZ) Business
17 Nov 07 5:45 am arrives Dubai (DXB)
Non-stop


Flight 3 of 3

From Dubai (DXB)
to Paris (CDG)




EK075 19 Nov 07 3:00 pm departs Dubai (DXB)
19 Nov 07 7:35 pm arrives Paris (CDG)
Non-stop

All,

I found a way to connect my phone to wifi and call VOIP

I requested the seats and now I am waiting.

Cheers

Timo

So after checking tons of dates; I found seats, but now I am told by Continental that it will not ticket because Continental does not have access to the Emirates Seychelles flight. It all seems very strange. She stated that when it tries to ticket it will just fail, because Emirates is not a valid partner to Seychelles.

Do any of the experts know any better on this subject?

Thanks for the help,

Cheers,

Timo

I went on to check Maldives as well and it is excluded by emirates for Continental miles redemption.

Cheers

Timo

Timo,

I'm guessing the agent confirmed this over the phone?

So, what Skyteam carriers are available for OnePass rewards to the Seychelles? AF/KL (if they even serve that destination)?

Darn it! I was thinking about redeeming miles to go to MLE next year! Grrr!

Yes, the agent confirmed that Maldives and Seychelles is excluded from using Continental miles and that there was no pricing in place for these destinations. Emirates will give space; but there is no pricing in place for Dubai to Maldives. It seems like Continental just needs to have their pricing department add Seychelles and Maldives as a 10D award from Europe and it would work perfectly, because Emirates is willing to give Continental award seats on the flights, just afterwards Continental cannot price the award. They tried pricing Dubai to Seychelles by itself and that didn't work either; but they could price Paris to Dubai.

Cheers

Timo

Sorry to stir up this old thread, but it seemed more relevant than starting a new one, and this way no one can flame me for not searching.

I was just playing around with the interactive award thing on co.com and I noticed that SEZ (Seychelles) is listed as being part of Asia when it comes to mileage redemption. I know I'm American, and therefore geography isn't my strong point, but I swear that giant land-mass next to SEZ is Africa.

What gives?

If you are so inclined you could book to CMB and buy the CMB-Male legs (cheap in any class). i think AF flies to Mahe as a code share - so doubt you could use that.

Geographic classifications for frequent flyer mile redemption purposes do not always mirror classifications for standard geopolitical purposes.

Has anyone been able to use OnePass miles to book into Emirates First Class? I am in the process of booking a round the world reward ticket and would like to use them to/from Dubai as part of my trip.


Thanks!

It is not possible to use CO miles for EK F rewards, unfortunately. It used to be possible to redeem DL miles for EK F, but I am not sure if that remains true.

Yikes, I was afraid that was the answer. That is too bad. Thanks.

Why not just book EK J with CO miles? It is better than the US carriers' international business classes.

Oh that's what I'll do. I was just hoping to be able to book full First.

More importantly, I don't think it is possible to book into international F on ANY carrier with a RTW ticket. No matter what the award chart may suggest. Indeed, I would find out what pushes one into the 280k bucket and try to work around it if possible.

From what I understand, you have to book into the 280k bucket to get CO BF, so as long as I have CO on one of my international segments, it looks like I'll be using the 280 bucket anyway...

Then what is the 280k bucket for?
 

I have long had a hard time understanding this. I would like to ask CO Insider to clairfy as my fiancee and I are also considering a RTW trip.

Continental offers three buckets in the RTW Series 17 Reward:

The RTW 140k bucket is for "Economy Class"
The RTW 220k bucket is for "Business Class"
The RTW 280k bucket for "First Class/Business First"

I and many of you agree that CO BF is the best Skyteam Business Class product. But CO BF is not "First Class" just as AF Biz is not "First Class" or VS Upper Class is not "First Class". And especially: why be charged the miles of the First Class bucket to use our own airline's business class?

Even more confusing -- what airline partner offers Continental bookable international "First Class" to be redeemed at the 280k bucket? Postings I find on FT say no airline allows CO OnePass miles to be redeemed into the First Class cabin for Series 17 rewards.

The only thing I can make out of this is that the 220k bucket is for domestic economy / international non-CO business class flights, while the 280k bucket is for domestic first class / international CO and partner business class flights.

If this is true, then I'd like to know why we can't book first class rewards, especially if Delta Medallions can.

I've found tremendous success in booking an EK D class ticket using OnePass miles with the most help from CO's Houston based phone agents.

I had one agent from SLC, who was helpful, but the Houston agents seemed much more willing to do thorough, long, sometimes weird searches to secure me seats.

Ultimately I did join EK Skywards to check their availability and was able to change days on my reward out of DXB.

EK miles on CO
 

Another thread to reference:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=830792

Rasheed