Emirates Skywards Devaluation
 

As has been reported by many sites, Emirates has devalued Skywards miles by 20% across many markets in business and first class. It seems like all itineraries that end or originate in Dubai have been affected.

The amount of fees, taxes and carrier charges has already made Skywards completely out of reach for many (apart from 5th freedom flights). With this change - is this program even worth it anymore?

Probably not. To be honest, the only reason I have stuck with EK after the ridiculous recent fare increases (whether it was through base fares or surcharges) was that it was relatively affordable to use miles to upgrade. Now that this has also been increased by this much, I am going to spend my miles and change carrier. I’ll miss EK as I enjoy it from many aspects but I cannot carry on like this. Other carriers on the routes I fly have less convenient schedules but I can no longer justify my loyalty to the brand. Two of my friends (both Gold members like myself) have done the same recently. Sad but true!

Yeh same - I've always loved flying EK, particularly for their premium products and I've always enjoyed stop-overs in DXB where I usually stay for a night or two. The carrier charges are absolutely ridiculous IMO, however now this program to me just doesn't make sense anymore. Unfortunately, using miles and points overall is getting worse across most programs, but EK has taken it to a whole new level.

Agree 100%. Really sad to see these changes given how much I enjoy flying with EK and have previously gone out of the way to flying with it.

I really don’t see the benefits of Skywards these days. Miles upgrade way too unattractive. I’ve never really benefited from any of the Gold advantages anyway (other than the awkward greeting on board when the purser is reading your name straight from their tablet).

Another bad move of EK. They diserve to lost all their loyalty members running to other airlines...Qatar, Etihad, or any other.
Let them eat their fuel surcharges and stupid miles required

It’s so funny because I was looking at transferring my Amex points to Skywards for a reward flight from LHR-DXB (business class) in May next year but when I saw that they were asking for 174,000 miles and over £900, I pulled back straight away.

I transferred a fairly big chunk a couple of weeks back... I should have learned from last year, as soon as a Buy Points promotion comes along, the devaluation follows on! At least they did the decent thing this year and devalued before the end of the promotion :(

Those taxes and fees are crazy

By the way...I'd take a look at the aeroplan program if there's any EK award seat available for your dates and route. Condiering that Aeroplan don't pass to you the huge fuel surcharge of taxes and considering they will devaluate the EK chart redeption at early 2023. If there's any award seat that fits to you I wouldn't hesitate much

This is utterly bonkers at the same time as they are opening up redemptions to Aeroplan, basically asking everyone to dump Skywards. Will be particularly annoyed in Aeroplan ends up with cheaper F pricing.

It's funny to watch EK go down the same route QR already did with Privilege Club five or so years ago when they totally trashed the value of the programme and then realised too late they'd made a massive mistake. I last credited a flight to QRPC in 2018 and I am still Gold through next year (I dropped one level in five years) because they have to keep extending everyone's status as they don't have enough members...

20%? Try 100%

!!!! You're absolutely correct - wow that is crazy. Unbelievable. See you late Skywards.

Yup game over at this point. They effectively nuked their program which must be what they wanted.

Sorry to hear this, time to start burning the miles.
On an every cloud note; we had been waitlisted for Y-J upgrade since Nov on MAN-DXB on 30th Dec, got the email and called and was only charged the old no of miles to upgrade, was expecting to have to shell out the increase - maybe because it was 'reserved' beforehand

Happy holidays

However upset I also am about the devaluation (see my earlier post), this ‘100%’ is factually incorrect as this would make Skywards worth nothing at all, which is obviously not the case.
I think we should try to keep emotion out of the discussion (however difficult that may be…)

Which routes are 100% increase?

I hesitate to add this, but those who are always pursuing a miles upgrade or miles redemption flight to avoid paying full fare for a seat they cannot afford to pay cash for, may tend to forget that they are in a small minority of people. They might mistakenly think that everyone is playing the same game.

What they probably forget is that most people travelling on an aeroplane actually pay cash for the fare class they choose. No airline could survive without that being true.

They do so because;

1. They don't fly often enough to garner enough miles and cannot afford to buy the number of miles they need, or

2. They have the money to secure a seat in the class they want and cannot be bothered with the drawn out and increasingly uncertain game of using miles to upgrade.

The vast majority of passengers can only hope for an op-up.

I suggest that those who persist with trying to get the seat they want using miles are people who purchase or are provided with a Y or J seat several times a year. This allows them to accrue enough miles to hope for an upgrade or a 'free' flight.

And I suspect these are the people who are now disgruntled with increasing surcharges and miles to achieve what they want, and in response are saying they will change airlines.

I understand it is disappointing to observe the diminishing chances of continuing this process. But these people must not fool themselves that Emirates gives a toss about losing them. At the end of the day, rightly or wrongly, it's clear that Emirates wants cash, not redeemed miles. And I think they believe the miles redeemers will be replaced by those prepared to pay with cold hard cash for the higher class of travel they want.

I do not subscribe to that theory. I believe that the upgrade / flight redemption path gives those passengers an opportunity to experience J or F travel, importantly encouraging them to purchase those initial Y or J seats. It keeps their loyalty to what I believe is a very good airline.

I do think that Emirates will suffer if they lose this group of people. It's a bad decision that will come back to bite them.

.....

Im on ek 22 on Friday 30th.

Depending on where you live, the miles that are being used are only accrued through paid fares. I have a choice. I travel business class for clients, and choose the airline for service but also for programme benefits. I'm not going to split my flights between airlines, and a couple of options disqualify themselves on the first of those two qualifiers. I'm left with 3 arilines. Am I going to choose the airline that makes it near impossible to redeem miles and has jacked up prices of those reward flights? Of course not. So they lose 4 or 5 returns a year to make a handful of extra miles on a seat that would otherwise likely be empty. I'm sure they'll come around in the end, but until then I'll take another airline for the next 36 - 48 months. It's not a huge loss, but it's certainly needless and with little return.

Rather than just linking to a blog, could you give some real life examples of where there has been a 100% increase?

Even using the routes in that blog, I can’t replicate the figures quoted.

The blog highlights several of the routes that experienced 100% increases. Even uses big pictures for those who don't want to read. Emirates has also said it will take a few weeks for everything to be finalized, so if you're unable to replicate, give it a few more weeks.

Wow sizeable increase on being able to use points to upgrade. Have a bunch of points just about to expire and was considering purchasing some to give me enough points to upgrade from Akl to Dxb to first. But I dont think it would be worth purchasing any unless I can be assured of the upgrade before original points expire.

I think the skywards program is not going to be very attractive at all to NZers going forward as hard to redeem.

Disappointing for sure. Was hoping to fly EK F again at some point in the future (flew once in 2017 when Alaska redemptions were still attractive), but going to be hard now. Maybe Aeroplan.

As I asked, please provide some concrete evidence of these 100% increases, not just just a blog with BIG PICTURES.

Surprise, Surprise...

Examples are in the blog. Don't know what else to tell you.

Blog appears to be incorrect. There are increases, but I've not found anything like 100% that you stated.

A few general assumptions here. Some people, like myself, only fly F internationally and have a mixture of revenue and award bookings, I would say almost 50% of each. Not work funded, entirely my own. Just because one pays cash, doesn't mean they don't feel the effect of this change.

Also, with "taxes" as high as AUD $1,800 for SYD-Europe in F pp, EK is gaining the equivalent of a Y fare for most F redemptions. It's bizarre that partners like AC can redeem and pay less than EK's own members.

I do, however, agree that they are pursuing the cash upgrade over redemption options. Some flights never open for F full redemptions but waitlist, auto upgrade and airport upgrades are all offered.

It's OMAAT. Often incorrect when the info isn't copied directly from FT.

I guess I fall into this category. I tend to purchase Y Flex+ tickets once or twice a month, on my regular route this used to be around £1200 a pop before covid. This was enough to maintain Plat and I would end up flying at least J the majority of the time. This would be a combination of upgrades with miles and quite a lot of Op-Ups. Lost luggage, purchasing flights on credit cards and missed connections meant I earned a lot of miles.

The same flight now regularly costs over £1600 plus surcharges ex UK. This combined with a deval means its no longer worth me purchasing Flex+ seats. The consequence of this obviously means I will not maintain Plat next year, which in turn means I am less likely to receive Op-Ups and all the other 'perks' which therefore reduces my desire to continue flying with them.

I am under no illusion EK will sorely miss my business, but maybe a little more than those who who redeemed Alaska miles!

I certainly hope the current inflated prices are not here to stay... If they are, I won't be flying EK, that's for sure!

I've done a search and I can see that it seems different routes have had different levels of increase. I don't see any 100% increase anywhere. One example I can talk to is DXB-CDG in F, a route I have booked/flown/searched for a fair bit. It has been circa 89k for a while, and it has now gone up to 102k - a roughly 16% increase. Unfortunately the real issue remains the taxes/fees which are now 500 Euros compared to 100 Euros only one year ago.

The 100 Euros was during Covid. The surcharges were pretty high prior to Covid, but then got reduced (or even removed in some cases).

Ex-UK (return to DXB), they were around £800 prior to Covid. Went down to around £300 during Covid, and are now about £900 :mad:

That's why using Skywards for J-F upgrades was always the sweet spot - no extra surcharges.

Apart from the quarantines, COVID was a great time to fly, i'm burning through my miles using onboard upgrades to avoid the taxes when I don't have connections.

Im sure that when supply and demand normalize after covid and the economy eventually cools down we will see prices come down significantly.

I've been hearing this for a while and still see no signs of it. I'm convinced this is the new normal. People had an awakening during Covid about how much they missed the freedom to travel and will be doing it from now on, even if they have to keep charging their credit cards to unimaginable levels.

From the perspective of revenue tickets, I have seen practically no price or surcharge increases for at least 3 years on my usual MEL-DXB-Africa flights. However, it's different for my US destination. For travel later next year, I notice MEL-DXB-JFK fares have increased substantially, while MEL-DXB-ARN is virtually the same as 3 years ago for the same time of year.

It looks lik EK is making assumptions about what increases will survive on certain routes. Time will tell.

UK to India in J is over twice what it used to be before covid .I've often travelled in J savers and return was well under 2k
These days it's often £4k +++ and I'm in the back ;-(

Yep - ex-UK fares are ridiculous. But people are obviously paying!