Alaska Airlines Now Allowing Emirates Awards to Australia

Alaska Airlines didn’t just add online booking for their generous new awards on Japan Airlines. They seem to have updated their allowable awards for travel on Emirates.

  • As a general matter, Alaska Airlines doesn’t allow you to book just any partner airline flight you wish.

  • They publish prices for travel between specific regions.

  • You can have a stopover along the way if you wish. But you cannot book standalone travel between two regions where Alaska doesn’t publish a price. At least that’s how it normally works.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan still does not publish a US-Australia chart for travel on Emirates. However, the AlaskaAir.com website is allowing travel between the US and Australia on Emirates.

The prices are fairly exorbitant:

  • Economy at 65,000 miles each way
  • Business at 120,000 miles each way
  • First at 225,000 miles each way

Back in March Alaska Airlines massively increased the price of Emirates awards without notice. So this is just how Alaska miles work with Emirates these days, orders of magnitude more expensively than on other partner airlines.

So I find this development most interesting either because it’s a glitch or a fluke, because they’ve itinerary pricing but not the website, or because it signals a change in how Alaska will treat travel on its partners going forward not limiting to specific routes. We’ll have to keep watch on this.

There may be some out there that consider this useful, especially since you can book an enroute stopover even on a one-way award. Emirates flies, for instance, New York – Milan – Dubai – Bangkok – Sydney.

Here are New York – Sydney options flying Emirates:

For me, 42 hours between New York and Sydney if no stopover is booked is simply too long.

Even if it involves:

(HT: @IadisGr8)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. I noticed this as a fluke of the Alaska Air website in the days before the devaluation. The website would offer routings from DXB to SIN via Either SYD, MEL, or Brisbane, I can’t remember which, I just remember it was a 77W to go from Oz to SIN.

    Unfortunately back then it was never bookable, and it priced at the same mileage cost as if flying to Asia.

  2. well you only get what you pay for ! AUS is pretty high I have to admit though I just came back from my sixth flight on EK plus some paid flights and still worth it for long haul. The Paris to DXB was ok, but they really shine on long haul.

  3. Prior to the giant EK devaluation I booked 2 F tickets, (JFK-DXB ~stopover~ DXB-HKG) which I completed last week. The F cabin on the 1st leg had 5 customers, and I understand there were just 19 in J cabin. The 2nd leg had just 3 F customers. The Passenger:FA ratio was 1:1 !
    It appears that Emirates doesn’t need to make profits, but flying woefully almost empty A380s doesn’t seem like a sustainable plan. I can see no sensible justification for EK/Alaska pricing 99.99% of their customers out of EK premium travel. Surely some bums on seats are preferable to none? Not expecting any backdown soon however!

  4. probably just an error that popped up when the system was updated to allow JAL awards. Once again bloggers attemps to kill the few remaining redemption pleasures of the world. FFGL for the win.

  5. The redemption rate between DXB-SYD on EK is absurd (as are most/all their redemptions now).
    You can pick this route up with Qantas using QFF points which are relatively hard to come by in bulk, or AA miles on QF if you have the time to sort through the dross and ‘unavailable’ but still showing, on the AA site.
    As an aside, I notice EK on many routes are flying with near empty premium cabins; I wonder why??

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