How to Book Awards on Emirates with Alaska Airlines Miles
There’s no question that Emirates First Class sets the bar for First Class luxury in the sky. With on-board showers, enclosed suites and a bar on its A380, it’s easily among the most expensive First Class products out there. The good news is that it’s actually possible to fly in Emirates First Class for a not completely unreasonable amount of miles. Although Emirates has very few partners, there are two programs that give us access to Emirates award seats and do not charge fuel surcharges: Alaska Airlines and Japan Airlines.
In this post, I am going to explain exactly how to book award seats on Emirates with Alaska Airlines miles and how much they’ll cost. As a preview, a First Class Suite like the one below is going to cost 90,000 Alaska Airlines miles each way if you want to fly from New York to Dubai, for example.
The Rules of Awards on Alaska Airlines on Emirates
- You cannot mix partners on awards. You can basically just have Alaska Airlines and one other partner, at most. So you can’t, for example, book a flight on Emirates from New York to Milan and have KLM from Milan to Amsterdam on the same itinerary.
- You can book one-way awards separately. This actually makes award booking quite a bit more flexible.
- Awards must start and end in North America. That is, you cannot book a flight from Milan to Dubai on Emirates using your Alaska Airlines miles.
- You can have a stopover on one-way awards. Alaska Airlines allows free stopovers on one-way awards, but only in select cities.
Examples of Routes We Can Book
Let’s look at a few examples of routes we can book on Emirates with Alaska Airlines miles:
- LAX-Dubai in First Class for 90,000 miles one way.
- PDX-LAX-Dubai in First Class for 90,000 miles one way.
- NYC-Milan in Business Class for 75,000 miles one way.
- LAX-Dubai (stopover) Dubai-Milan in First Class for 100,000 miles one way.
- NYC-Dubai-Maldives in First Class for 90,000 miles one way.
How Much Do Awards Cost?
Alaska Airlines has a completely separate award chart for each partner so it can be a little confusing. Let’s take a look at its awards for Emirates. You can find the full Alaska Airlines Award Chart here and, in each region, you will find a specific section for Emirates.
Alaska Airlines books awards as one-way. The prices below refer to one-way prices that can include a routing on Emirates as well as connecting flights on Alaska Airlines operated flights only. Unfortunately, you cannot mix partners on awards with Alaska Airlines. That is a big downside, but Alaska Airlines does allow a stopover on one-way trips in select cities.
Europe
- Economy between North America and Europe: 47,500
- Business between North America and Europe: 75,000
- First between North America and Europe: 100,000
India and Middle East:
- Economy between North America and India or Middle East: 42,500
- Business between North America and India or Middle East: 72,500
- First between North America and India or Middle East: 90,000
Africa:
- Economy between North America and Africa: 47,500
- Business between North America and Africa: 77,500
- First between North America and Africa: 100,000
Asia:
- Economy between North America and Asia: 52,500
- Business between North America and Asia: 75,000
- First between North America and Asia: 100,000
How to Search and Book Award Availability
Alaska Airlines actually has Emirates award space bookable on its website so it’s actually quite simple to book awards. As an example, let’s say I want to travel from Los Angeles to Dubai in November.
I actually like to use the calendar function so I can quickly see all the days of the month that has award availability. Once I click Find Flights, I can see exactly which days in November have award availability.
As I said, Alaska Airlines has a separate award chart for each airline so we know that an Emirates First Class flight is going to come up at 90,000 miles each way. The 80,000 miles tickets are likely a different airline and, by the looks of the attached fuel surcharges, it is probably British Airways. Since I can see there is availability on November 15 and November 23, I can select those two days.
On the next page, I can see those days come up with the non-stop Emirates First Class flights, exactly like I wanted. The whole thing will cost 180,000 Alaska Airlines miles round-trip + $70.30 in taxes.
If you want to schedule a stopover on one of your directions, then you would want to use the Multi-City award search.
Has anyone flown First Class on Emirates?
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I have AA miles not Alaska. So I can’t book award travel in Emirates using AA miles. Correct?
That’s correct. American Airlines and Emirates are unfortunately not partners.
Thanks. So if I have to book international travel in first class, then I need at least 90k alaska miles. Signing up for one CC is not enough I suppose? Transfer from SPG can help, but not a lot….
Note that it’s very different for families. We are traveling BOS-DBX-KUL in Feb. We have BIZ seats booked on Emirates using Alaska miles and the reason is because they only have ONE seat in F available on all flights. Okay one flight had two seats. But families often have more than that many people. This post is more geared toward the single traveler or a couple.
Once upon a time, many many moons ago it was perhaps possible but now consider yourself lucky if you can grab a couple of business class seats together in the same flight
We did SEA/DXB stopover DXB//MXP in Biz last year and enjoyed it. This year we are doing SEA/LAX/BXA stopover DXB/FCO in first on an A380 just for the experience. After our cruise of the Med, we will visit Rome and then fly to Paris in biz Air France, stopover, and then fly home. This is all one AS award ticket.
Ooops, I see I have a typo. I meant SEA/LAX/DXB. We plan to ski in Dubai.
Wow, great job putting all that together! :)
I think whether travel must originate or end in North America depends on the specific award chart. For Instance, Alaska’s award chart for Cathay shows an award for travel between Hong Kong and Europe.
Very helpful post. One thing to note is that if you are searching for a multi-leg trip, the availability will show up as “business” class even if only one of the legs is in business class and the other (longer) legs are in coach.
For example, I looked up JNB-ORD and it showed seats available in Delta in business class, but it was JNB-ATL-JFK in coach, with JFK-ORD in business (domestic first).
So, best to search one leg at a time.