Emirates flights, Skywards Miles, and upgrades

Emirates is a great airline, and I’ve booked many enjoyable flights with them. However, when it comes to using points and upgrading flights, the information I’ve received from their customer service has often been vague. Different representatives have provided conflicting answers, which can be quite confusing.

After several flights and many calls to customer service, I’ve finally managed to gather some clear and helpful information about how Skywards Miles can be used for upgrades, and how individual and family accounts work separately.

TL;DR

If you're short on Skywards Miles when trying to upgrade your flight, you can convert American Express points into Skywards Miles (if you have enough). There are rules around transferring miles between individual and family accounts, and you can only transfer a maximum of 50,000 miles per year.

To earn Skywards Miles, you can either fly frequently with Emirates or accumulate points on an American Express card, which can be converted into Skywards Miles at a 4:3 ratio. For example, 40,000 Amex points would convert to 30,000 Skywards Miles.

If you have an individual account, these miles can be used to upgrade to business class. There are three upgrade options:

Upgrade with miles
Upgrade with miles and cash
Upgrade by purchasing a promotional ticket (subject to availability)

Passion Passport — Photo by Amir Hanna / Unsplash

Economy Saver Tickets

If you have an economy saver ticket, you can upgrade only by miles. You need 82,000 miles per person to do this.

Economy Flex Tickets

If you have a economy flex ticket, you need 50,700 miles per ticket to upgrade to business class and have the option to pay for any shortage of miles.

Flex Plus Tickets

If you have a flex plus ticket, you need 39,000 miles per ticket to upgrade to business class and have the option to pay for any shortage of miles.

If you are short of miles you can purchase them at approximately £25 per 1,000 miles. You can also have a friend or family member transfer you miles at a cost of £15 per 1,000 miles from their individual account and you're allowed to transfer a maximum of 50,000 miles per year.

Here's the kicker - you cannot transfer miles from a family account to an individual account. When doing an upgrade only the head of the family account can perform the upgrade by miles through their account. Your contribution level must be set to 100% if you'd like all earned miles to go into the family account rather than your individual account, or you can choose your contribution level if you will be using miles from your individual account. You cannot transfer miles between your individual account and family account.

If a member under 18 is part of your family account, their earned miles do not contribute to the family account.

Some Tips

If you are short of miles in your family account and there's more than 1 person in your family account, if they have an American Express card linked and they have points on there, they can transfer points to their account and if their contribution level is set to 100%, the miles will go into the family account. This will allow any member to use the miles in the family account. Please always ask permission from the family head if you'd like to use the family miles to purchase an upgrade.

With the American Express card, you can only link one Skywards account to your card per year. This limitation is in place to prevent transferring points to multiple accounts.

If you're looking for an American Express card, the American Express^® Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card is a great choice where you can collect points from your spending and use them as Skywards Miles, or you can get a statement credit and make other purchases.

Please note: the American Express links are my referral link - you will receive point for signing up and spending within the first 90 days. I also receive points if you satisfy their criteria. Please see their T&Cs on the link.