I do wonder what the return cost will be for LHR to DXB on Economy Flex, Economy Flex plus and Business Special. Only a few days left to find out.

So an additional 28,000 miles for a return upgrade to Business on a Economy Flex ticket or additional 10,000 miles on a Economy Flex plus ticket. Ouch.

I would not be surprised if they reduce the MBNA credit card miles earned too

Probably the same as the fare classes now - so Flex Plus is going to be Y,E,R fare buckets, Flex is going to be U,B,M,W,G and Special will be a new P class - so, I think the current Business class saver O fare is going to be the price of the new P class Business Special with O class moving up in price, and the economy fares will stay where they are - pricing is more of a market based determination which takes into account what the competition is doing on the popular routes that EK pax buy on, rather than determining it from the fare bucket, which leads me to believe that the actual headline prices won't really change for each fare class, just mileage earning.

We will soon know!

eternaltransit - thanks a lot

Certainly in Europe there has been a recent (or about to happen) reduction the fees MBNA and the like can charge.

I can't remember the detail, but when I was told about it, it was being related to FF miles and a potential reduction.

Sorry what do you mean fees? The annual fee?

No, it's regarding the amount that the banks cream off every transaction being reduced (or something like that). The effect of this was said to be MBNA and the like reducing what they would give EK for their miles.

I'm not at home just now so don't have access to the source, and can't recall a lot of the details.

I'll try and remember to post back if/when I have more detail.

The EU Interchange fee antitrust investigation, a result of which Visa and Mastercard have offered to cap at around 0.2%-0.3% of transaction value across the EEA (previously interchange was levied at different rates across different countries in the EEA, but now there's "Domestic", "EEA", and "Rest of the World" rates. However, interchange is really only Visa and MasterCard's cut - as in, the cut the actual payment network. Processing fees for cards are still levied on top by payment processors and then distributed to issuers (say, 1-2% depending on whether it's a normal Visa, or a corporate Visa, or a MasterCard Signia, or normal MasterCard or it's done over the phone, or if you are an airline etc.) and it's that fee that issuers take and use to reward you with points they buy from loyalty programs. Debit cards, credit cards, charge products - all of them have different rates, but the only ones that consistently give enough margin for decent rewards (i.e. 1 point per USD/GBP/AUD etc) are credit cards, specifically premium ones. Some co-branded cards, such as Airline co-brands and Hotel co-brands give the co-branded merchant an interchange/processing rebate for spend at that location (e.g. a Marriott hotel accepting payment on a Marriott credit card gets a small rebate on processing costs for that card usage - which usually just goes to the hotel buying you more reward points).

Ironically, everyone thinks that AMEX is the most expensive, but I've seen total processing fees for Visa Infinite and a MasterCard World Elite surpass AMEX charges...

^^^

You explained it much better than I ever could.

I understand Emirates et al would have been told a couple of weeks ago of the effects on their MBNA agreements.

I was told as long as you book before 1st Feb you can upgrade at the current rates but I wanted t make sure that there was availability on the flights I booked as didn't fancy a 14 hour flight in economy if they didn't become available.

I was fortunate however as after a couple of phone calls to EK and a couple of e-mails 2 seats became available on the flight I wanted so now all is booked. I also booked flights to Europe which I upgraded so only have 80k miles now left to burn

I've qualified for the companion flight ( J and Y) and the �150 off F or J ticket on my MBNA card for the second time. I used both in 2014. However I'll have to think twice about these in 2015.

I'm in my second year and I still have not received my �150 discount and companion ticket from the first year

I would have thought the only reason to get the EK Credit card is for the Elite card on Emirates spend only (4 miles per GBP on the website), which is you earn at 0.25p per mile, you can just about wring out 1.16p of value if you upgrade a flex Y fare to J (e.g. LON-DXB, rt in flex is about 900 GBP, J is 1800 cheapest, saving of 450 each way, 39000 miles for the one sector upgrade).

Of course, to even get that means you need to spend 20k GBP with EK to earn the miles at the 0.25p rate. But still, the credit card isn't totally useless at this point, but a 1.5% cashback credit card is starting to look much more attractive than the EK credit card. Or you can redeem 55k EY miles for EY F LHR-AUH on 36k spend on the EY credit card... - 8p value there at 3k GBP equivalent! But that's a topic for the EY forum.

I'm not sure what miles I earn with my Citibank card but know that I (sorry my wife ) spends a lot so they rack up.

I wonder if they will change the earn rates here in Dxb given the value of them has been reduced.

Similar to the discussion on the BA board about their changes, it's harder to change the earning rates on credit cards, because selling miles to credit card partners is a nice and easy profitable business for everyone involved as it generally does seem to incentivise spend quite well. Well everyone apart from merchants, but then they just jack up the price anyway. In fact, it's sometimes (and usually, if well managed) much more profitable to operate a loyalty scheme than it is to actually fly the planes around - although you need to fly some planes around to offer an aspiration redemption possibility for actually get the whole eco-system moving. The planes are like a loss-leader. In my opt cited example, QF is a company that does exactly this: it makes money from the loyalty program (2xxM AUD profit from loyalty), but loses money on planes (500M AUD losses from flying).

That means airlines and points issuers don't want to rock the boat too much in a way that makes the credit card offering seem less attractive - not many people look at the devaluation of the currency by looking at redemption prices - especially as you can target your devaluations at certain routes, hide them in minimum fare types to boost cash revenue etc., but it's much more noticeable to notice a drop in earning rate from 1 per USD to say, 0.5 per USD. Additionally, partners will have contracts with the points issuers which insulates them to a certain extent, or guarantees the point purchase cost for certain times, so it takes longer for these changes to filter down the chain to non-directly controlled earning methods.

As a lawyer who specialises in commercial banking I could have endless conversations about this!