This arrogant attitude of EK has been going on for some time as they have this mentality that demand is there and revenue keeps on coming so they can do what they want. I,ve already switched over to EY and became a Gold member in no time - getting rid of EK and the arrogance and hope others will follow...Just hope EY doesn't start to make funny changes!

Do you think it'll work?

I tink I'm going to do a couple of J-F upgrade before the changes, with the knowledge I can cancel and get the miles back if I want, after the change is implemented.

I don't trust EK's IT to get it right, or the call center staff to know the rules, so would rather err on the side of caution.

I'm tempted by EY like some others on here, but is it just a matter of time until they devalue their program too?

Upgrade availability and irrops support doesn't seem good either, from reading FT.

I'm not sure what to make of this, it appears I can earn the same miles/tier miles but I pay more to compared to Etihad which is on average �500 cheaper per flight in Business.

I like going through DXB as my destination is Dubai but is it worth the extra money with the devaluation and likewise does the cheaper cost make up for extra transit times...? I'm not so sure.

I've booked 2 flights at great expense so I hope so...

I asked someone and they then added it to the FAQ's. I'm trying to do all my j to f's now. Flying f to man in the morning and seem to have success wait listing in the lounge.

If you fly j it's not so bad but if you want a y to j you are now screwed.

As always, and I think airlines are pushing people to this mentality more and more, is for people to make their purchasing decisions based on price and schedule and convenient and product, not because of their loyalty program. The "loyalty" programs are no longer there to try and attract business and keep you there to go out of your way to use them, but instead are more like a rebate scheme if you hit certain revenue/spend levels. The paradigm shift of course is painful for people who have optimised their purchasing patterns around a program over immediate product.

It might be heresy for a community like Flyertalk, but I think people should ignore loyalty schemes and book for the offering instead and be happy that you get a rebate at the end of it. Airlines want a history of revenue and profit from you (and I can't blame them), instead of trying to lure people who promise some nebulous "future business" if they get pandered to.

Actually the biggest problem here is having higher prices & lower FFP value.

As previous poster said (myself included), latest fares from EK for upcoming flights is getting dearer. For most companies, this translate to decision to change carriers. Of course there are always some leeway in my company if cost difference is not too big, but what's the incentive to insist on EK if the benefits are reduced?

Just did a quick search on Expedia (SIN/GIG 23/2 ~ 19/3).

AF one stop (Eco) - USD2218
EK one stop (Eco) - USD2592

Use to be EK was cheapest option for one stop SINxGIG. Guess not now...

EK has upped their fares on those routes that they're offering the best connection. Obviously going via DXB is much faster on this route than going via Europe, therefore EK can afford to charge more.

Contrary to some people who still believe EK is a scam ( ), EK is rather quite a "cashcow" for Dubai, working hard on maximize it's earnings.

If that means low fares to win a certain market/route, it's low fares. If it means it can milk a route, it's milk time

Of course - but I don't think EK is pushing up fares because they are forced to, I think it's because they think there is enough business out there that will pay their prices regardless of having a FFP - perhaps they have done an analysis of their customer base and see that their most frequent travellers are booked via corporate TAs (and therefore have little influence in the purchasing decision - it's purely a price/volume thing) and/or that their premium travellers are once a year visiting friends/family travellers, who aren't interested in loyalty schemes either. Thus my point is that EK is competing on offering and trying to extract higher margins out of their fares, through a combination of reducing incremental costs of a pax and by fare inflation.

There are of course many exceptions and many of them are represented on this forum - but to answer your question - the incentives to book EK are targeted at people who have loyalty scheme considerations way down their list of priorities: they are prioritising price, connectivity, schedule and product. If there are a few casualties on the way as part of that shift, then they regard it as a small price to pay (perhaps because they project that there will be a critical mass of carriers now shifting to this kind of program, where margin is rewarded, not frequency/mileage, and so in the end they have to focus on their offering and people will come back to them).

Actually in all the companies I've worked with, the corporate TA's take feedback from travelers seriously. The companies (at least the ones I've worked for) spend extra to fly us Biz class, so that upon touch down we are able to hit the ground running. Hence personnel comfort & preference is considered to a certain extent.

Of course cost savings is always an issue. But as long as difference is not exorbitant, we generally have a say on whom we fly with. Anything more than 5% difference, and it's a no-go. And before anyone say that 5% is minor, my company's employees are required to travel at least 25% of time. Multiply that by about 1000 pax, that adds up to quite a substantial amount over a financial year.

As with any airline, they'll push the prices as far as they can. We're in an upturn at the moment, so people are spending more. EK (and other airlines) will take advantage.

Once the downturn starts again, expect more sale fares and bonus miles.

Just look at BA. They are cutting down back on almost everything, but they are still making a good profit. There was a post yesterday about the amount of booze that's carried (they are now round-tripping, so it frequently runs out). m3red could probably drink it all himself

Tbh Emirates Skywards is a pretty poor scheme but it works for me as I tend to fly with them most unless it's to SA in which case I tend to fly Etihad as I use the miles accumulated with Euro airline travel.

For me product quality and convenience comes first but with price hikes happening coupled with the fact I pay on a personal card then claim back makes it slightly harder for me to justify the increase in fares, if the company paid for it straight up then fine but as I need to pay first, maybe it's not quite as fine.

Also the whole part about airlines wanting revenue and profit rather than potential 'future business' based on a loyalty scheme, I fully understand where you and they're coming from but why would they risk current frequent flyers like that? I'll most likely fly Emirates when I need to rather than because it's the better option and in all fairness to Etihad, their product is a lot better and in some cases, it exceeds Emirates.

I'm not saying that travellers don't have any input at all into the purchasing decision - clearly if employees are very unhappy that they are being sent on a carrier that's affecting their work performance, I think there would be another look at the travel patterns.

However, what I am saying is that I don't think any decent finance department/travel coordinator whose primary aim is to get employees to a destination at the lowest cost possible within a certain schedule (so non-stop/transit time compared with priority of employee schedule) without impacting their work performance too much (aka hard product/transit experience) is going to be very sympathetic to the mileage earning and frequent flier program consideration of its employees over a 5% reduction in fares on a different carrier.

Which is essentially the same as me saying that airlines are competing on price (as we agree on) and also their schedule and hard product and not anything else (corporate rebate deals notwithstanding). Mileage earning and FFP devaluations I don't think are very high on a corporate booker or one-a-year friends-family traveller list of priorities when making the purchasing decision.

EDIT: also, with major corporate deals such as the one your company has I presume, with thousands of tickets booked a year, the price that you see that is allocated out of your project/department budget may not in fact be the actual cost to the company as a whole, if there is some sort of rebate scheme in place - the rebate may just be booked in a different department as ancillary revenue or however your finance department wants to account for it. This may incentivise (as is the point) your corporate TA to make bookings that seem to be slightly more expensive, but actually end up being the same price (to the company) as less optimal connections

Totally agree with you that Skywards is a horrible program for when it comes to earning/burning - but isn't it the same issue again: you have loyalty...up to a point when it becomes more convenient for you to fly in EY to destinations served by EK. So I think some airlines are just giving up pretending to try and entice you with loyalty schemes - which essentially eat into margins for no incremental revenue per ticket. Whereas, with a revenue rebate scheme, your margins are only reduced once you have banked a certain amount of cash profit already so in effect you are more likely to not lose money on this pax over the course of their relationship with you.

Why would they risk current frequent fliers - I think they have crunched the data and found out either that there is a significant number of customers who cost the company money due to their incremental costs associated with their status making future flights unprofitable as they can then consume more than the margin on the ticket, and that their other volume is made up of business that doesn't factor in the FFP into the purchasing decision (as in, corporate booked travel and one a year travel - both of whom put more importance on things like headline price and product etc. ). The people who do actually try and choose EK based on the loyalty scheme (that is, go out of their way to choose EK when another more optimal choice of carrier is available, either a cheaper one, or a better schedule or a better product) - the loss of that business is, in their view, replaceable with increased margins on the remaining fliers and no further losses on any pax (that is, cheapest low margin tickets who then use ancillary benefits to become a net loss).