Skywards, the loyalty programme of Emirates and flydubai, recently crossed the 25 million-member mark. Interestingly, 5 million of those have joined in the last 18 months at a rate of six new members every minute.
Just five countries account for 10 million Skywards members. The UK, the USA, Australia, India and the United Arab Emirates are the five top five countries represented.
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Book with Cash+Miles and save $25 USD for every 2,500 Miles
For some time Emirates has offered a booking option called Cash+Miles. This option uses Skywards Miles to reduce the amount of cash that needs to be paid for a ticket. Skywards is offering a special saving of $25 USD for every 2,500 Miles for bookings on both Emirates and flydubai.
Cash+Miles has been particularly useful for people who may have some Skywards Miles but not enough for a classic reward booking or upgrade. This could also be a useful option for anyone with Skywards Miles on the verge of expiring.
At the rate of $25 USD for 2,500, your Skywards Miles are being valued at $0.01 USD per mile. That is not amazing value but it is not terrible either. It is also much better than letting Miles expire or go to waste if there is no prospect of earning enough for a classic award.
25% discount on buying or gifting Skywards Miles
Keeping with the theme, there is a 25% discount on the cost of buying or gifting Skywards Miles.
Unlike some recent Skywards offers, this is a flat discount regardless of how many miles you buy. However, there is a minimum purchase required. You will have to buy at least 5,000 Skywards Miles to trigger the 25% discount.
Usually, the maximum number of Skywards Miles it is possible to buy or gift in a single year is 100,000. However, that annual limit is doubled to 200,000 between now and the end of the promotion.
Don’t forget it is also possible to pool miles in a ‘My Family‘ account. A combined family account can have up to 8 members. With the annual cap lifted this would allow a family to potentially buy up to 1,600,000 Skywards Miles in total.
25% discount on Skywards award bookings
Emirates is also offering a discount of up to 25% of the number of Skywards Miles required to book a reward flight.
This will only be available on selected flights. It is not clear how many seats will actually be on offer at the discounted rate.
I searched for Skywards Miles seats for a number of short and long-haul trips coming up over the next five months. There were no discounted awards available on any of the dates or to any of the destinations I was looking for.
Admittedly, it could be that these were particularly popular routes. Or it could be that the discounted seats have all been snapped up. Either way, if you have any travel coming up, take a look now and you may get lucky.
25% discount on upgrades
The final promotion is a discount of 25% on the number of Miles required to upgrade from either Economy to Business or from Business to First.
Once you have made a booking, log in to Manage booking on Emirates.com to see if there are any upgrades available. Check the Skywards Miles calculator to see if the number of miles requested is discounted or not.
Emirates Skywards elite status is rare
While there are now 25 million Skywards members, I was surprised by how rare elite status remains. There are just under 640,000 members globally with any sort of status and a mere 15,000 with Skywards Platinum status.
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