Very unhelpful half an hour of my life wasted speaking to Skywards Customer Support. Very grateful for anyone who can take the trouble to answer the following. My wife and I are planning a trip from GLA to SEZ next September for our tenth wedding anniversary and would like to fly in Business class ideally reducing the cost by using Skywards miles.

1. 16000 of her miles expire at the end of January 2014. If she transfers them to me does that reset the expiry date?
2. If we are both travelling, do we each individually need the required miles or can we book if between us we have enough miles for 2 passengers?
3. Are the limits on purchasing miles for ourselves, purchasing miles for each other and transferring existing miles independent of each other or is there a total limit of 25000 miles obtained?
4. If we are looking to fly in Business, is the availability the same whether we use miles to purchase a Business ticket outright or alternatively buy a Flexible Economy ticket and use miles to upgrade?
5. Is there any way of checking availability online of Flexible Economy to Business Upgrade rewards without first buying the Flexible Economy tickets?
6. Can you check availability for Flexible Economy to Business Upgrade rewards or Business rewards if I don't have enough miles at present? If yes can I still do this if I would not have enough miles even if I purchased my full remaining allocation of miles this year but would still need to buy more miles in the next calendar year?
7. The agent said there was no Upgrade reward availability for specific dates I suggested next September. In general terms how likely is it that reward seats will become available as we get nearer the departure date?

Incredibly grateful for any links, help etc. Great website. A few years since I last posted but had forgotten how good a place it is.

Bryce

I can answer only as much as I know..

2. You will need to use your own miles in all cases. If you have the booking on one itinerary, you can upgrade online if the main person who booked the ticket has sufficient miles for both passangers.

3. You can purchase 25,000 miles per year each. Transferring miles will cost you. To buy more miles for Emirates, set-up an spg account as you can transfer to Emirates. You can buy 20,000 miles and get 5,000 free when you transfer 20,000 miles to Emirates or any other airline.

4. Better value to buy flexible economy ticket and use miles to upgrade, rather than using miles to purchase a flight ticket IMO.

5. Yes. You can use http://www.expertflyer.com/ and what a fantastic tool it is. Can check anytime for a small fee.

6. See above.

7. Very likely. Provide us with your dates and someone can check availability for you... I cancelled my membership so sorry I cannot check for you.

P.s. Welcome back!

Thank you so much. Couple of points:

3. I have an SPG account and will look at that option. What I was trying to ask was whether the 25000 miles limit applied individually to miles purchased by yourself for yourself, miles purchased for you by somebody else, and existing miles transferred by somebody else (ie potentially 75000 miles in total) or whether the 25000 limit was for the total.

4. For my itinerary 2 upgrades compared to 1 cash purchase + 1 miles purchase worked out very close. Is it one big pool of rewards or do Emirates allocate x seats for Business purchases and y seats for Upgrade rewards.

5. Will look at expertflyer. Sounds interesting.

8. New and unrelated. On another trip we are are flying back from COK to GLA via Dubai. I have upgraded the Dubai - GLA leg using miles, but at present no availability for COK - Dubai. Would happily pay cash but Emirates say you cannot have part miles part cash upgrade. Sounds daft to me. Any solutions? Is miles Rewards upgrades likely to become available before the flight (Jan 28)? Would I have cash or miles options at check in or at the airport assuming availability?

8 - buy miles at USD40 for 1000 and then upgrade with miles. Can't say for availability. Provide the flight dates/number and we can check the availability. (Which usually comes available a few hours before departure...)

You can upgrade with miles at check-in as long as you have your Skywards card present for them to swipe.

3. My understanding is that it's two. Miles purchased for you by whoever, plus miles transferred. I.e. 50k total max.

4. I think miles upgrades and miles purchases come from the same fare bucket, but availability depends on load.

8. Upgrades often become available very close to the flight date. Whether for cash or miles depends on the flight, you just have to ask. You could also call EK to try and find out more about availability, cause their website doesn't show fare buckets. Alternatively, use expertflyer.

My input.

1) Transferring miles does not reset the expiry date.
2) One account for both upgrades, or split the PNR and use two accounts, one for each upgrade. This will be of use if the first account has less then half the miles needed so it'll be cheaper to transfer the required miles to the second account.
3) No idea.
4) Yes and No (sorry). There are Flex Business and Saver Business tickets. Either may be available to purchase direct, and they come from different buckets so availability may change. Upgrades from Y always come from the same bucket as Business Saver Reward so buying an Economy ticket for upgrade requires a different bucket again and may have different availability.
5) Yes. Look on EK site for Business Saver Reward availability and it's the same for Y-J Upgrade rewards.
6) Yes. Yes.
7) They often appear at very short notice but it all depends on how busy the route is at that time. I can't help you there.

Expert Flyer, although not required to check availability, can be handy for alerting you if upgrades are released. With the top level of service you can set it to email you if the fare bucket required becomes available. It saves checking on emirates.com every day.

A bit more input.

4) The easiest way (least hassles) to get a Business (J) seat using miles is to purchase them outright - these seats come from the O bucket (that's 'Oh', not 'Zero') and are the most likely to be available at any particular time, but seats bought this way cost roughly twice as many miles as they would if you'd paid for an Economy (Y) seat and then upgraded, and you'll also have to pay the fuel surcharge in cash. So why would you do it this way? Because EK make it quite difficult for you to upgrade from Y to J. It's almost impossible to do it until 15 days before your flight departs, and it then depends on how many J seats are left for sale. Also, if you purchased an ultra-cheap Y seat from one of their special offerings, they won't allow you to upgrade until 24 hours prior to departure at the earliest, by which time all the D bucket seats (those J seats that you can upgrade to from Y class) may well have gone.

2. Technically if you are both travelling on the same itinerary then you need all the miles required for the upgrade in one account. However if you call Emirates they should be able to split the booking for both of you and you should be able to upgrade separately using your individual miles.

If your miles are not enough to upgrade the entire trip then it might be wortwhile trying to see if you can upgrade one of the sectorswhich needs lesser miles. . Does DXB SEZ need lesser miles than GLA DXB. Upgrading each sector separately costs more miles though than upgrading tge whole GLA DXB SEZ in one go. But its not a bad idea if the miles are about to expire anyway. I have also noticed that sometimes there could be avaialability on one of the sectors individually but no upgrade availability for the full trip.

3. The 25000 limit applies to purchased miles AFAIK. (It does not matter whether you purchased them or whether someone else gifts it directly to your account). There is no limit on transferred miles though.Technically someone else can buy the miles into their account and transfer them to your account but then you will be hit buy the cost of purchase and then the cost of transfer.

Thanks to all for further really valuable information. It is genuinely very helpful and greatly appreciated.

If I understood the agent correctly he did state that transferred miles did reset the expiry date. Considering the cost of transferring is over half that of purchasing ($25 vs $40 per 1000 miles) I would almost be expecting that to be the case.

He also appeared to state that if I purchased 25000 miles for my wife she would not then be able to purchase any more for herself. This is consistent with BA's approach. I can't comment on other programmes as I don't use any other airlines other than BA or Emirates any more than occasionally.

He was less than convincing however with English clearly not his first language. That is not meant to sound arrogant as I am the first to acknowledge my own poor language skills (common to many whose first language is English) although equally I am not working in an international call centre. Would greatly appreciate any further views on these two points. I think the others have been clarified.

Fairly sure the tickets I bought were not a special deal so hopefully some seats will be opened and available to me 15 days prior to flying.

Very many thanks ukdoctor. Your reply crossed with mine and I think 3. is now answered. Just to clarify 2. are you saying you either need enough miles for 2 tickets in 1 account or enough miles for 1 ticket in both accounts. Would they allow you to book, for example, both GLA-SEZ tickets from 1 account but for the return book from the individual accounts? And to take an even more complicated scenario, would they allow 2 tickets for GLA-DXB-SEZ and SEZ-DXB to be booked from 1 account, with DXB-GLA booked from the 2 individual accounts? The first scenario is possible using miles and cash but not the second apparently.

That's pretty much correct but when you upgrade using miles you must upgrade everyone on the itinerary. What this means in practice is that for the 2nd scenario you must separate the PNRs (assuming one PNR for 2 pax on the original booking). This is normally done quite easily with a phone call.


As you say, a bit more complicated. It would require splitting the PNRs as above. I don't know if that is possible if the trip has already started so maybe better to do it up front. After that, then yes, although it would cost you more miles overall with the two return sectors having been upgraded seperately.

If you can afford it pay for j.

You will struggle to get availability to sez and if you do it won't be at the same time as your flight from gla and you'll then spend more miles as it costs more to upgrade individual legs.

Upgrades using skywards are now difficult and far from guaranteed unless you travel in quiet periods or book 12 months in advance.