We both had an email to say we each had 12,700 Skywards miles expiring at the end of October. We were offered the opportunity to 'spend' the miles with a 20% discount at Emirates High Street. I thought I'd ask a couple of questions to get some advice.

1 Is it a case of we might as well spend them because we are going to lose them anyway?

2 Is there p&p added to any order and can this be paid in miles also?

My other observation is that 12,700 miles roughly equates to less than US$60 judging from the goods on offer which seems pretty worthless miles to me. We've accumulated about 70,000 miles over the years with at least 1 J class return UK/Australia annually - less than US$300!

I'll read through the Skywards sticky thread as well for more information but thanks in advance for any comments.

Poor value at the High Street, but your 70,000 miles would be not far short of a one way upgrade from Oz to UK so a potential value of well over �1,000 if you could use them.

Also look at redeeming on Easyjet if you've any local trips planned.

Or a return upgrade from UK-DXB.

If you must 'save' those miles for later use, then spend ~$600 to cross transfer them. But again for that much you could always buy them from SPG when on sale and you'll have 25k pronto or sort of.

Using your miles at High Street is a last resort from my perspective. I always think the best value is to buy a Y ticket and use them for a J upgrade.

Thanks for advice. We've already got a J return booked for Jan (GLA-MEL) so I could try in Manage a Booking to go for a J to F upgrade on a sector it seems. I'll see how many miles it would cost for different options.

I'm not sure if there's 2 or 3 class between GLA and DXB but could try DXB-KUL; KUL-MEL on the way out and MEL-SIN, SIN-DXB on the way back.

For some reason we are only Blue now after being Silver but if travelling J I don't see any difference to us - we still get chaffeur pickup and lounge access as J pax irrespective of how many miles we have.

We have about 77,000 Skywards miles but only 22,500 tier miles presently with the 12,700 SM due to expire end of Oct. If we apply SM's to an upgrade this doesn't affect the TM's?

Probably the upgrades won't be available until closer to Jan departure though!!

No they are totally independent of each other. TMs cannot be used for upgrades - they are only used for status qualification.
They might be - go to manage my booking and try upgrading your flights and see what the system throws up.

Thanks, tried and got the 'sorry, there are no reward seats available in the next higher class for the flights chosen. Please try again closer to the departure' message. Annoying when 12,000 miles are expiring at the end of the month. I'll keep trying an upgrade until the end of the month and if still not available will spend the 12,000 on the Emirates High Street.

You can use skywards miles on easy jet as well. GLA-CDG is 10000 miles one way if you book early

GLA-DXB is a 3 class plane on both flights now

Thanks, we always go the 'earlier' one both ways.

To update on this, I've tried and tried for upgrades with miles but not available. So, because we each had 12,000 miles expiring soon we spent them on the Emirates High Street (and used a 20% disc code), getting a watch each! Turned out you have to pay VAT and shipping on your credit card which is understandable but annoying nevertheless.

With about 65,000 miles still left (and miles to add to this once we travel of course) I'll try for J to F upgrades closer to the time. I'm not sure how to use the calculator so roughly speaking, does anyone know what the following upgrades would cost?

GLA-DXB
DXB-KUL
KUL-MEL

MEL-SIN
SIN-DXB

We'll go for as many legs as we can.

The mileage calculator is here:
http://www.emirates.com/account/engl...owinterim=true

Here are the miles required for a 1-way upgrade for Saver fares, followed by Flex fares.

GLA-DXB 32.5K 25K
DXB-KUL 42.5K 32.5K
KUL-MEL 37.5K 30K

MEL-SIN 37.5K 30K
SIN-DXB 42.5K 32.5K

Just be aware that miles to upgrade the entire GLA-MEL is 80K for a saver fare, and 62.5k for a Flex Fare so if you are lucky, you have sufficient miles to be able to snag a 1-way upgrade all the way from GLA to MEL if you have a flex ticket.

Two class on both flights was introduced in June last year at the same as they launched the second daily flight

Maybe just bad luck, but I was on a two class a few weeks ago and a colleague flew on a two class last Sunday evening.

Stewardess told me it was probably down to high loads in Y, and the opportunity to sell around 70/80 more Y tickets.

That's great mate, many thanks for the help.

Ah, thanks too, will look for DXB-MEL or DXB-MEL-DXB upgrades only.