Hi folks,

So, last March I flew emirates return ZRH-DUR. This was my third round trip with them to ZA. (My new wife is from South Africa...I'll be going down that way often now.) This trip was supposed to push me into the next tier.

I had been considering making Emirates my preferred airline/miles program over my nearly decade long run with Swiss/Miles-and-More....

That was until I started looking to book another set of flights this upcoming January, only to discover that my miles had not be credited. I'm really good about keeping my boarding passes, and sure enough my Skywards number was on them. (See below.)

After contactoing Skywards by phone, the woman seemed to communicate a few things:

• must claim miles within six months
• I was past six months (barely), so tough luck
• she was shocked to hear that I did have my Skywards number on my boarding passes
• that they would credit the miles if I could prove that my Skywards number was on my boarding pass

So, she had me navigate to the "email us" part of the Skywards site and submit a copy of my boarding passes. I did that, but it was not clear if the attachement process worked. On both Chrome and FireFox for OSX, their site seemed to be bugging. No confidence that this worked.

Two days later I got a form email with this snippit:

The second paragraph makes me hope that I might win this battle: I did quote my member ship number, and it even appears on their documents. I replied to the response email, with an attachement, but who knows if anybody at Skywards will ever get that.

So, my questions:

• Do I have any chance of getting these miles out of Skywards?
• Is it common for Sykwards to screw people out of miles on technicalities?

I'm in the fortunate position of being able to choose my airline for these twice a year trips to South Africa. If Emirates is going to be difficult this way, and try to screw me out of miles at every other corner, then I'll pay the premium and fly Swiss from now on.

Your thoughtful input is appreciated, folks.

tia,

Stu

Hi Folks,

I'm glad to report back that Emirates has awarded the miles. Whew!

Stu

Good to hear this..^
Basically if u hv given ur FFP number and that shows in the Boarding pass then you are safe since then its their problem ..

Unfortunately not. If for whatever reason the miles do not credit, you need to claim within 6 months. Otherwise they are gone. In this case, pure mercy.

And polite persistance?

• 1 long phone call
• 3 emails
• 1 public tweet
• 1 public flyertalk.com post

Yes. That was exactly my position. It took some effort but they saw the logic and all is good.