Skywards Tier Retention
 

Hi All,

Hope you are all well in these strange times.

I was just wondering if EK were planning on any serious measures of helping Skywards member retain their tier status whilst the travel restrictions are in place and whilst it is financially going to be more difficult for people to regularly fly for leisure, and business flight frequency may take a massive hit due to companies and employees reassessing the need to make frequent long haul journey's as well as companies reduced spending?

In typical EK fashion they probably won't do anything aside from the current 20% extra tier miles (I believe) for certain tickets until June.

Has anyone heard anything regarding this? Many thanks.

RK

Garbage if this doesn’t change.

JUST 80% of your travel? Generous or what?

And how does anyone do 80% of travel for the foreseeable? That's what I meant by the 20% comment.

Other airlines and companies are making allowances already as the writing is on the wall.

Agree EK are definitely going to have to rethink this, a 20% bonus isn't much use when all EK flights are suspended.

As much as I like EK generally, Skywards is a p***-poor programme and status is almost worthless to the point I hardly care if I drop status levels, shockingly poor bonus earning rates and no real benefits if you already book premium cabins for status levels that require comparatively more flying than the majority of other airlines.

I posted a few days ago they'd extended my membership by 6 months. I see it varies dependant on renewal date, but a good start.

https://www.emirates.com/english/help/covid-19/

I think they will need to review the entire programme as it will be very dark times for all airlines and competition will be fiercer than ever. People and companies will re-evaluate the frequency of travel v risk from now on, not to mention financially they will be a lot more careful. Let's see what happens.

Gulf News today:

Emirates airline on Thursday announced that it is offering support to all its members, assuring that Skywards Miles due to expire soon will be automatically extended until the end of 2020.

https://gulfnews.com/uae/covid-19-em....1585819931064

An email I just received:

Retaining tier statusEmirates Skywards Silver, Gold and Platinum members with a tier review date prior to 1 March 2021 will retain their current status for a further 12 months with just 80% of the usual travel requirements.
Extending tier statusEmirates Skywards Silver, Gold and Platinum members, with a tier status review between March 2020 and September 2020 who are unable to retain their existing tier, will have their existing status extended until 31 December 2020.
Extending Miles validityThose members who have Skywards Miles expiring soon needn’t worry – we’ve has extended their validity until 31 December 2020. Skywards Miles can be redeemed up to 11 months in advance for an extensive range of rewards, including flight tickets on Emirates and partner airlines, flight upgrades, hotel stays, and money-can’t-buy experiences..

Please note: Details of this relaxed policy may not immediately reflect in the ‘My Account’ section of emirates.com

This is rubbish, They seem to be among the very few stingy airlines that keep this stup.... policy of counting the cents and pieces. How on earth are people gonna be able to keep any status at all when flights have been suspended and will be suspended till at least June? Obviously business isn't going to resume from one day to another, nor will people be in a position to spend money on leisure travel to keep status?

After the flight suspensions are over, it's gonna be summer, which is "low season" for business anyway, so at best, in my case at least, business will resume in september, which gives me literally 1 months to have the insane number of miles required to qualify (my review date is sometime in October). or do they expect us to fly back to back?

Skywards miles are already worthless, and these sort of policies they have having (in addition to the upgrade on basis of fare paid) are gonna drive people away to competition. as simple as that.

Pure madness.

Just got that email as well. I am currently in the 2 month 'grace period' before falling back to Silver (oh, the shame..;).). The email says I'm Gold. But I guess its expecting too much to have that type of Gold protected. I would have qualified again in June on the 13 month rule but that's not going to happen, even if they fly again by then, my travel requirements have changed.

when will the my account dashboard update
my friend silver expires in may 2020 but doesnt say dec 2020 yet as per todays email

I am Silver, and my status was meant to expire in end of Feb and I am 1000 miles away from re-qualifying which I dont think I care anymore lol. However I did receive a email around that time saying they will extend it to April for me so an extra 2 months. EK Skywards is pretty dead anyway however it was nice achieving something for once lol.

Your email says Gold because of the initial extension mentioned in post 6, I expect. I'm the same, so December seems even better.

I'm trying to understand....ok, you need 80% of miles to re-qualify...but there is basically no flying in March, April, May for most....that's already 25% of the year gone...this if we consider we all rush back on planes on the first one flying....if we are even allowed to fly and cross borders!

What I don't understand is that to me it reads like...80% to re-qualify....which we won't...but than we extend your benefits for 6 months?!?

Why not simply give an extra 6 months to everybody to re-qualify (to be extended if needed)? Or simply extend current benefits by one year?

The competition will indeed be fierce once the skies re-open...isn't what they do the best way to send frequent flyers to the competition?

There is for sure something I don't understand here!

Yes, I think this reading is correct. For whatever reason Skywards feels like a weird afterthought within EK rather than a proper loyalty programme that encourages people to be loyal - EK seems to just view it as a cost item.

I'm not sure if I get it. Already qualified for Platinum again in Feb (flew over 200k tier miles), and my renewal date is March 31 every year. So I have till March 31 2021. Do I only require 80% (it says that is only valid for review dates 1 March 2021 and earlier). What about for review dates after March 1?

Has anyones online dashboard been updated to show December 2020

Mine was already December 2020, and I got the very generous extension until December 2020. :D

Mines still showing as:
You require 39,680 additional Tier Miles by 31 October 2020 to renew Gold.

No chance of that happening as it stands.

No change for me either - either in number of miles to advance to platinum or retain gold (by October)

and
they should really update it, if they emailed us

ok maybe it's fine for you lol

Updating the dashboard is probably not on the priority list right now

Still show this :
You require 8,250 additional Tier Miles by 30 June 2020 to renew Gold.

Not that I care of being demoted anyway

my account need to renew on this Nov, but they stop flying to my city until 1-Jun if every thing go on track how come I can reach 40,000 tire miles on this nov, only 6 months for me. I think I need to have a status match for insurance

Would also be nice if they could do something about extending Skywards+ since we are currently paying for absolutely nothing.

skywards+ hasnt been officially rolled out to everyone. I wouldnt think they care right now

I do have an updated dashboard date now - my current review date was supposed to be 31 March 2020, and so now says 31 October 2020. I suppose that with the 'usual' +2 months of status after the review date (should I not requalify) would take that to the Dec 2020 as advertised.

I'm the same, but it's not what I expected which was status until December, not October. The "miles to renew" figure doesn't seem right either as it includes miles in September 2019 counting towards renewal in October 2020. Hopefully still a work in progress.

Not myself but my mother got an email last week saying they had upgraded to her to Silver. She has no further travel planned for EK. Has been Silver and Gold in the past but has been Blue for 6/7months now. (Switched loyality)

Nothing for me! Still showing it will expire in June. Oh well. I'll be choosing airlines on cost and desirability now. Will be nice to have a bit of a change.

It's only half way through April so you still have time to requalify, which is a better option than the current offer.

I am silver and would have achieved Gold by . I needed 10 flights by July, easily achieved with at least 1 return flight per week (DXB-MCT) or 24200 miles (not easily achieved! on the DXB-MCT sector).
However, with the current state of play I wont be able to achieve Gold my silver requalification was until 31st 2020 so I have time but I was anticipating Gold until they stopped the flights.

Will I be given an extension or have I lost this chance? If so i guess I will keep silver for time being but will ensure that my *G is requalified first before EK.

it seems like will be lose your chance, they just frozen for any downgrade action but the tire will still expire on June.

Ridiculous comment - I've missed the two trips I would have taken, therefore it should be at least extended by the months missed, plus they should bear in mind they will never totally recover from this and such frequent flying for MOST will become a thing of the past...

But then that would be admitting to a problem, which is something not common in certain mindsets.

My post does sound bad I admit, but that's because I missed a bit out. :)

I meant to add that should you not qualify by the end of June, I'm sure the current policy will be extended and you will find yourself with a free extension going well into next year.

I think they've probably got more urgent priorities than a frequent flyer program, especially a not very good one.

Thanks for clarifying ft101! I did think it seemed a little blunt! Apologies for my curt response.

Yes I'm sure they have, scary times indeed. I'm sure they will fair better than a lot of others too.

However it will be cut throat after this. Money will be tighter for everyone, and there WILL be a major rethink into the necessity of frequent business travel after it has been proven it is not as essential as it once seemed, which will have been proven in recent weeks. Companies on the whole will have to tighten their belts, fact.

Leisure travel may have a slight surge very much initially, however many people who have lost jobs, taken pay cuts, lost a fortune on assets and investments, and re-assessed the risks of frequent foreign travel, I'm adamant that will suffer too. So airlines will once again have to look to entice new and old custom in many ways, especially loyalty schemes and USP's.

So with over a month of further complete shutdown since EK's previous Skywards policy was announced and it becoming increasingly clear just how slow the recovery in traffic will be, one would think they might be looking to do something more for Skywards members than the previous policy by now. My current situation below just to illustrate the ridiculous effect of EK's current policy.

I started using EK last year, moving some of my flights that were previously with QR to EK (QR Plat for several years now, alongside various other statuses). Had to start from scratch with Skywards and I'm currently stopped on Silver with a 31 May status year-end. Did quite a few flights as cash + miles bookings so didn't earn a lot of tier miles for them given the way EK treats earnings on those. I'm well within 20% of Gold and had enough flying planned before the end of May to make Platinum (>50% of my flying happens in April and May, hence why my first EK flight was then and my year end is now set as then). However, because of the slightly stupid way Skywards works, I'm a lot closer to earning Gold than I am to retaining Silver this year and sit at just under 80% of what I need to retain Silver. So instead of being Platinum at the end of May, I'll have earnt ... Blue.

Meanwhile, QR is bending over backwards to offer extensions to everyone and also being flexible on cancellations whilst EK is trying to charge fees on flights they cancelled...

Agree Skywards is not the greatest FFP out there but neither are others, such as *Alliance (had my fair share of frustration with LH & LX), or come to think of it, did not QR’s Privilege Club do a big Award Chart Devaluation without any notice 12 months ago?

https://onemileatatime.com/qatar-air...b-devaluation/

Compared to some other carriers (LH, LX or US3 etc.), EK actually is paying full refunds:
https://www.emirates.com/media-centr...ds-capability/

Reading the refund posts on QR not all is there perfect either.

If it makes you feel any better the experience of Plat is not much different to Gold. My bags missed just as many connections (if not more) whilst I have been plat, when my bags did arrive, at best they would arrive with J luggage but at times would come out with Y luggage even though you are supposed to get priority - it has actually become a running joke with my mrs not to bother putting red tags on our bags. Some pursers would still speak to you like it is your first time flying, for eg - 'If you want to upgrade with miles you need to have enough in your account' (in a condescending tone), Denied boarding twice, when flying Y being told "if you need anything let me know" means absolutely nothing. Even Op-ups, I got just as many as Gold as I have as plat but obviously there are a lot of factors in plat for that.

For me, the whole flying experience is solely down to the purser and the crew. When you get a good crew they will be great whether you are plat or gold or I guess no status, whereas if you get a poor crew, your status is irrelevant from the moment you receive your on board welcome.