petter2

Hi,
I am currently sitting on loads of UK Amex Membership Reward points and would like to redeem on a one-way from LHR to AUH on EY in June.
The Etihad website is giving me a price of 115.292 miles one-way for 1 pax in business, 58,896 in economy. I can't get any information about taxes displayed because I don't have any miles in my account.
Is this really the correct pricing? Seems like a lot. Any better ways to book that flight using a different Amex partner?
Thanks

pogonation

It should be 62,500 but I am also seeing 115,292 which is a bit odd. Either way, EY is a rip off and I would not recommend using them on this booking. Taxes & surcharges would be around £400.

Cheapest option by far is transferring your miles to SQ and booking LH/LX to DXB for 29,000 miles in business. Loads of LX availability in June after lockdown is supposed to lift. Tax & surcharges is £353 (of which £180 is the UK APD).

To be honest I think the best deal (assuming you will be actually doing a return) would be BA premium economy revenue booking for £650. 24,000 BA miles each direction for the upgrade to business (many options available). Make sure you choose the A350 flight with the club suite with closing doors and direct aisle access. You will also earn miles for the PE revenue class (about 7000 miles).

This same BA method could be used for a one-way but that would cost £480 for the revenue ticket.

petter2

Thanks, so it's not just me!
There are some really cheap options with Wizz Air via SKG, ATH and SOF, coming to less than £50 each way, so I booked that for the way back with a 2-day stopover in SKG.

pogonation

Wow that is a good deal. I wouldn't want to fly Wizz Air on a 7 hour flight home but with the stop in Thessaloniki it seems like a good deal!

For the one-way then I would use SQ miles to do the LX option to DXB (and then head over to AUH). Starting your trip outside of UK (e.g. Booking ZRH-DXB direct) will save about £200 in the APD and taxes as well.

wsc

hi - when you say LH/LX to dubai, is that starting from Frankfurt / Geneva to Dubai? Or is there London to dubai availability with SQ somehow?

wsc

that 115k they advertise includes taxes as miles for some reason
if you have some miles you can test this out for short haul routes, or at least that is what I found.
Maybe worth a call to them to see what the real rate is

pogonation

Connections are included so you can use your SQ miles to go from anywhere in Europe for 29,000 miles. LHR-ZRH-DXB for example can easily be found and booked through the SQ website using miles.

wsc

Great thanks, finding decent availability.

Finding first class via this route is impossible I assume? I checked with no luck.

atsak

Can UK Amex transfer to Aeroplan? They show Etihad availability at reasonable rates I've found.

pogonation

F on LX is blocked for *A partner redemptions (and some of their own members too). LH F only becomes available to *A partners in the 2 weeks before departure... But LH doesn’t have F to UAE.

So yes the best option is LX in business LHR-ZRH-DXB.

hurnik

I believe Etihad has currently (hopefully temporarily) blocked/removed First class (I think there's ONE route they offer it). We had our flights downgraded to all J from F out of JFK. Ended up cancelling our flights.

I thought I also read somewhere that SQ has no F until May of 2022?

Dogmatick

I can only presume it is including the taxes in miles which it seems forever want to do now, definitely would not ever suggest MR points to Etihad unless you are getting a big bonus on it

Yes just checked and confirmed that it is doing the taxes via miles, I believe that if you call you can pay the taxes as cash instead else use the slider in the payment field to reduce the miles to roughly that shown here and pay £337 in cash

Dogmatick

HAHA Just checked and for the same miles, 62k, and £532 in cash you can fly first ! That's only 200 quid for the upgrade which would be worth it in the old days - I just don't know what EY first looks like right now !

wsc

Unfortunately not!

And looks like Etihad is scrapping most of F... very sad, I wanted to try it out, looked amazing!

atsak

It absolutely was. Thai had the best ground services I found, but Etihad's apartment was . . . really unbelievable. The residence too - I never got to fly that but they did let me look around in there when I was flying in First. I'm really glad I got to do it - sorry you didn't; I think Singapore's is apparently very similar by looking at pictures so maybe you could try that using Krisflyer ??