Skywards or Partner Program???
 

I am looking for some advice on miles accumulation on Emirates or its partners.

I typically fly from North America to India about 5 times a year in business class. So far I have been doing the journey on Cathay and accumulating miles on their Asia Miles / Marco Polo program. Its been good as its given me One World status which helps with domestic travel in US. Also, Cathay has been fairly liberal with complementary upgrades to First on more than one occasion.

Recently with Emirates launch of SFO service, their connections and fares are better than Cathay. I am trying to figure out if I should join Skywards or accumulate points on one of their partners (I'd probably go with United with respect to partners).

Any thoughts?

EK only usually upgrade when the flights are full. However using your skywards is very easy, there are few black outs, no peak time upgrades and you can upgrade from the cheapest of Y tickets into J class. They have some good offers throughout the year for double and tripple miles - well they have this year. Their J class is superb on the SFO/LAX/JFK - DXB routes, howvever its a lottery from DXB to India.

I am a huge fan of Skywards due to the ease of using the miles. You get good bonuses when Silver and Gold, one return trip SFO-DXB-BOM gets you silver when you land back in the USA, so you'll earn 25% more miles on your second trip and 50% more on your third.

You can use EK miles on CO and UA within the USA.

For 5 flights a year, I would go with EK.. Anyone else back me up? :)

without a doubt. Fly Emirates.