looks like you got it now! I pay currently 55kNT$ for a W ticket with 100% milage, if it's gonna cost me 60 or 65 in the future I can fly bloody turkish in Y+ for 59k... at least the seat's gonna be better. .:(

Just checked prices with ITA Matrix in April, EK is at the very end for pricing, I can now fly CX and LH with one stop in Shanghai or HKG for 33K while EK is 48k, all the lowest fare class of course. I just won't have lounge access though :(

That's disgusting! The best Y-J upgrades were DXB-LHR for me as they were somewhat reasonable at 25,000. :mad:

I like how they conveniently left these increases out of the email. :mad:

Its worse than that now Ahmed.....to get the upgrade for 39k you have to buy the new Flex class which is now 2 notches away from the cheapest fare....so its sure to be more expensive than the old flex class.

Miles accrued is now also reduced for all classes.

It's disgusting how Emirates can try and sell this as an "enhancement" when in fact its the opposite.

If I weren't based in DXB and this hub is so convenient for me, I'd likely switch now to QR.

From the current earning structure, I looks like I'll have trouble making it to Gold in my next qualification :(

And hard to digest that most of the miles in my account just turned into vapor overnight...:mad: :mad:

still not clear whether existing flights will be upgradeable after Feb at the old rates or the new ones post Feb.

If so, I want to upgrade all my J's to F now!

To be honest it won't impact me too badly as a mainly J flyer, I'll probably end up travelling less if I have to buy J or F rather than the odd Y flight I can upgrade.

Looks like QR/EY will be getting a lot of business.

The SA Voyager remodel has made that awful as well. Both my FFP's are gone downhill so fast...

I will be joining the FFP of the next ME carrier that flies to DUR (if it ever happens). Until then, I will have to go out of my way to fly QR DUR-JNB-DOH-LHR. Their fares are actually amazing. J return for $1,900 (EK is $3,400) Hell yeah!

EDIT: Just called Skywards to see if they had any D inventory on DUR-LHR in June/December - No
Any D inventory on DUR-JFK in September - No
Any D inventory on DUR-HKG in October - No

They clearly don't want anyone booking and using miles before the "enhancement". On a total of 16 flights, a grand total of 0 have D inventory open.

Can you redeem EK miles on partner airlines? If so, I'll try SA JNB-LHR.

I suspect that most people actually book flights based on things like price , schedule and quality rather than FFPs and that any movement might be quite small

But people who use FFPs fly the most...

Those that fly the most are not necessarily those from whom the margin is best

And even there, I suspect that most do not let the tail wag the dog in having the FFP decide the flights

Those that are going to be driven by FFP are , I still suspect the minority

I booked my flights on EK solely for the FFP.
Platinum has been good to me since its introduction.
Although, I will give my final verdict once I see how much more the fares have increased with the new fare structure.

Indeed, the main EK customers from the UK will be :-

1. People heading out to the Far East/Australasia on holiday. They pay the lowest fare, and know that their tickets are not changeable/refundable. There will be little change for them.

2. People flying on business who don't actually know how much a ticket costs. Their corporate TA sorts out the ticketing. They will probably still pay the Flex saver rate, which won't change much from the old Flex rate.

Those caught in between (like most of us on here!) are the ones that will be hardest hit.

I fly EK a couple of times a year, normally using miles for either a Y-J or J-F upgrade. If I want to use an upgrade with the new fare structure, my base fare will go up quite a lot (I suspect).

Where did you see these upgrade costs?

Is it the same for a J-F upgrade?

You have to log in and use the new calculator.

In J on Mon on 22 - trying to get 2 Z's now as 32.5 to F is better than 39k

If you buy flex I think its 30 to F but Y to J is 39k!

Ouch....

time to cancel the Citibank EK card...

Hi

Does someone have a confirmation/clue if this new miles calculator is based on OW or RT trips (as this looks like a beta version or whatever).

Call Centre Not Aware
 

Amazing... or not, I called today twice the EK call Center to ask how can I maximize my miles... and both persons I talked with were not aware of any changes.

One of them asked me to forward the e-mail I got from Emirates to the Call Centre.... since they are not aware of its content :)

Ex-Lufthansa executive to lead Emirates sales team

http://gulfnews.com/business/aviatio...-team-1.866874

With him, he brought the worst of Lufthansa Miles & More policies: the devaluation of Frequent Flyers Miles

Based on one-way. No change announced to tier miles earnings, so take the blue tier as the tier miles earning rate.

I suspect after Feb they are completely changing the IT system with the new booking engine, so you'll pay the new, more expensive rates...

Guess not only UK, but for Europe on the whole. Atleast my personal and official trips are always based on the points 1 & 2.

Lufthansa: Destroyed loyalty, now on a slow but steady way down
Emirates: Destroyed loyalty, guess I know where it will goes..

Oh well, OW is the way to go anyway..

So, have just dug a little deeper and it seems they are essentially changing FFP to make sure that no one traveller is able to be a net loss to the business, whilst also aligning the FFP to reward high margin travellers (instead of distance flying). Except it isn't really reward is it, it's giving you what you have now and strip things from people whom it is convenient to strip from.

Let me first preface this post by saying I think EKs announcement is really quite cynical - a major devaluation (which is always unpleasant, but is a fact of life with all loyalty programs...economically extremely difficult to keep printing points into your little ecosystem when the amount of point-sinks, aka redemption/expiry opportunities just doesn't keep with the earnings) with literally no redeeming (ha!) features is spun to be a positive. Worthy of the crudest political theater, imho, not a service organisation, and an awful tone to communicate with your most frequent customers who get the impression they are seen as stupid enough to not realise what's going on (or they just don't care enough). Not a good message to send out as the cynicism works both ways: it will take much less for people to change their buying habits (hand lotion notwithstanding).

However, I think the calculation at EK HQ is that it is all the best for the company in the long-term and better to get the short-term backlash over with now, as they cull loss-making customers - higher margin customers (aka, the more flex J and F fares) are more insulated as we see on the earning rates and the increased number of points out there with barely growing redemption options means those redemption seats are more valuable (to EK) and so has to be dealt with by devaluation. The entire industry is moving towards the rewarding revenue model, and this goes further by blatantly going to the rewarding margin model. I can't exactly blame EK for doing it, I just wish they got subsidised by their rich owners so I could earn more miles, haha!

Doing some rough calculations, let's take a route like LON-BKK - a typical EK route between the two busiest outstations on the network. (also makes the mileage calcs easier!).

An old Y saver would go for 460 and flex starts at 960. Full Y is 1100-1400. (including taxes). You earn 6000 miles for a saver rt and 12000 miles for a flex rt. The new rates: 3000 for special, 4200 saver, 8400 flex, 12000 flex plus.

Old system: Gold after 8.3 savers, 4.16 flex; Platinum after 25 savers, 12.5 flex
To EK that means a gold member has given them:
400*8.3 rising to around 800*8.3, around 3.3k GBP-6.6k GBP revenue - on savers
900*4.16 to 1300*4.16, around 3.7k-5.4k GBP revenue.
For platinum, it's: 10k GBP - 20k GBP for savers, or 11.5k GBP - 16.25k GBP for flex.

If we take EKs margins from their accounts at 4%, we can see that's around 132GBP profit for the whole year for someone on cheap fares with status, rising to 216GBP for someone flying on higher margin fares, or with Plat, 400GBP - 800GBP. There's also that interesting area between similar margin fares on the border between high cost saver and the cheapest flex - the old system saw EK wanting people who travel regularly to buy the highest saver, not the cheapest flex. Relatively anomalous pricing that needs to be fixed! However, inside the same cabin, you can say that the cheapest fares have lower margin than the most expensive (obviously). So you would want to say something like, savers have a margin of e.g. 1% and the top flex, up to 6%. That gives us a different profit distribution: 33GBP-324GBP.

You can see how an EK accountant looking to trim costs/improve margins might be looking at the lower margin business and think, hang on, every time they go to the lounge and drink half a bottle of champagne and eat food, they spend 10 GBP in additional costs. That could wipe out yearly profits on a pax, so what's the point of giving them status. Similarly if you are in the DXB F lounge twice on a trip and your yearly profit value to EK is 500 GBP and you're making 10 trips a year, spend 30 GBP a time there (easily doable with the restaurant and wine costs)...what would be the point, says a bright spark. Not to mention the additional baggage allowances and increased Skywards miles earnings.

Now, in the new system:
Gold - 16.6 specials, 11.9 savers, 5.95 flex, 4.16 flex plus
Say the prices range: 400, 600, 900 and 1200 GBP
and the margins are: 1%,2%,3%,6%
Ek are seeing: 66.4, 142.8, 160.65, 299.52 a year.

That makes more sense to revenue managers and can justify the extra free stuff you get once you hit that status. And as the higher margins on the most expensive fares require less flying, you are more likely to have to give the free stuff less often! Accountants and revenue managers get a bonus!

If you do the same calculations for other routes, short and ULH, they have broadly similar revenue equivalents for status, indicating that the driving force between the changes is to make sure that ancillary status costs can be directly compensated by the higher margins/profit value of a pax and so EK aren't in a situation where travellers like those on FT have not actually made EK enough money but are using ancillary services ultimately costing EK money.

Makes the FT hobby less fun...!

As an aside, I think it's a race to bottom to try and force all carriers globally to move to revenue/margin based FFP schemes.

As many have said on FT, the idea of loyalty died years ago, cheap means commodity and it means choose based on price and schedule...not offers!

gosh, thought the same but had a little hope. :(

@eternaltransit, good analysis and thank you for crunching through the numbers. Although one thing to note, the extra costs of the wine/drinks in the lounge are already part of the running costs. But sure, cutting down the numbers that go through the lounges will essentially curb down that tiny bit of cost.

anyways Turkish will start flying from TPE End of March and their J prices to FRA in return are below 70k at the moment, even cheaper than EK, maybe wort h a try at least for me..

Turkish European J may not be J as you currently know it with EK.

Just got confirmation from TA. SIN/GIG cheapest flex fare now AF, with LH & EK almost the same (1 stop). If willing to go 2 stop, price difference is even bigger... Sigh...

Devalued FFP + higher cost = TA's going to book new airlines now :(

Hope to convince company to stick with EK (better departure/arrival time).

Of course - I was just illustrating the thought process of what I presume someone at EK HQ has thought about when tasked to "save costs", and it also happens to align with making revenue managers happy with the now much clearer correlation between net profit on a pax and status. I guess it's like casino loyalty programs: they know exactly how profitable an individual gambler (and their win variance) and so they know how much they can comp the gambler rooms and free drinks. If you have made the house five million dollars in profits over your lifetime business, then giving you a free case of Chateau Lafite isn't going to cost much...same thinking here now, with airlines, make sure that the pax has given the airline enough profits to cover all their future lounge costs and don't let anyone slip through the cracks!

Also thins out the ranks of status holders, which would be nice for those remaining if they then actually gave additional benefits (but highly unlikely), and good for the facilities budget so they don't have to rent more lounge space in terminals...

It does look as if the levels of minimum spend are about 7-8k USD on high margin fares and 10k on the low margins for Gold and 25-30k for Platinum. iO remains at around 1million USD plus good behaviour I think!

Compared to other carriers though, is this going to be the new global standard amount of revenue? 10k-20k USD for top tier? And will it make other major alliance carriers introduce revenue requirements (either explicitly like DL/UA) or implicitly, like EK have done. Will it turn the good-for-travellers loyalty schemes (the easy ones) into cost centers that might not be sustainable, or will every airline look at it as something that has no net cost (as in, any status/earning is made up for by the higher margin tickets), or will they go QF and make loads of money through it :)

I've just booked 2 flights. Convinced I'll get a better deal now on miles and tier points than if I wait until the fares are implemented (First out saver J back).

It would be interesting to run a thorough search to figure out the cheapest route/fares to get through to Gold/Plat.
After doing some random searches I've already found a couple decent F fares (still useful routes) that could allow hitting Gold with 2x returns for around 5k USD per ticket. For me to do this, I'd have to get back to where I was 3 years ago (work wise) but then I'm starting a family. And what's the use of those miles again? pretty pointless on cheaper fares.

They really ought to fix that F award seat inventory ASAP.

Call it coincidence if you want, but just today got my status match to Etihad guest Gold. I call it sign of destiny.

Mind sharing the details or email where I can status match? Thanks.

I hear you. Won't be much use with kids, use em now on the wife!

Using miles to upgrade your wife? Now there's an idea :)

How many miles for an upgrade to Scarlett Johansson?

From the e-mail:

Some of the new fare types will offer even more Miles, helping you to reach your next reward and tier status more quickly

If this is completely not true, how we should judge them?
They think that we are idiots so they can write anything?

Why they can't just say "sorry, we have some unpleasant changes".

Or maybe this calculator is wrong....

edit:
OK, I can see where is this increase.
Business Class Flex Plus is more then now Business Class Flex...
(for most people is not interesting change...)

Anyway, my gold is expiring End January.
I had very good time with Emirates.
Maybe will have chance to fly with them again in (far?) future.

Couldn't agree more.

Skywards was always a lousy product and now it's getting worse. I won't be going for Gold next year. There's no point.

I'll just continue to earn and burn my 1,000,000 UA MP miles. At least it's a lot cheaper.

I wondered how long it would take you to post on here!

You didn't like ek before these changes!

Was thinking the same thing zainman - wonder if we can convince them to create an EY card as I see that there are going to be 2 flights per day MEL-AUH very soon which would work well for me..