Emirates Skywards Award Booking Instructions

Emirates is an international airline headquartered in Dubai that’s become world-renowned for its super-luxurious first-class product. Among travel-hacking enthusiasts, Emirates is also known for its robust frequent flyer program, Emirates Skywards.

With this program, members can earn Skywards miles in a wide variety of ways and then redeem those miles for award flights with Emirates or one of its airline partners. There are also several other ways to redeem Skywards miles that provide inferior value per point, such as booking hotels or buying merchandise. But, if you want to maximize the value of your Skywards miles, you should stick to redeeming for award flights.

Unfortunately, the Emirates Skywards website can be fairly difficult to navigate. So, in this article, we’re going to walk you through the step-by-step process of redeeming miles for award flights, including how to open an Emirates Skywards account, how to earn enough points for an award flight and the actual purchasing process.

Joining Emirates Skywards

Before you start purchasing award flights through the Emirates Skywards program, you need to enroll in the program. The first step is to visit the Emirates website and click the “Log In” icon on the top-right corner of the homepage.

Once you’ve done so, you’ll be redirected to a new page where you’ll need to select the “Join now” option.

Next, you’ll need to provide some personal information, including your title, name, email, desired password, date of birth, country of residence, preferred language, phone number and invite code (if applicable).

Invite codes are used for promotions that Emirates runs as incentives for new members to join the Skywards program. For instance, in 2023, Emirates ran a promotion that offered 2,500 miles to new members who signed up using the code FLYBETTER. So, make sure to check if there are any active promotions before you finish signing up for Emirates Skywards.

Once you’ve input all of the required information, click the “Create an account button” at the bottom of the page. Then, you’ll receive your unique membership number and will be officially enrolled in the Emirates Skywards program so you can start earning and redeeming miles.

How to Earn Emirates Skywards Miles

Now that you’ve enrolled in the Emirate Skywards program, you’ll need to earn some miles before you can purchase an award flight. There are many ways to earn miles through this program. However, certain earning methods are more effective than others. In general, the most effective ways to earn Skywards miles are transferring points from credit card rewards programs, signing up for an Emirates co-branded credit card and flying with Emirates or one of its airline partners.

Let’s briefly look at each of these earning methods so you can start saving up for your next award flight.

Transfer Credit Card Points

Perhaps the best way to earn Skywards miles is to transfer points from credit card rewards programs. Most of the major credit card rewards programs allow transfers to the Emirates Skywards program, including American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Brex, Capital One Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards.

All of these programs offer transfers to the Skywards program at a 1:1 ratio, with the exception of Citi ThankYou Rewards, which transfer at a 5:4 ratio and starting September 16, American Express will also transfer at a 5:4 ratio.

Most of the time, when you transfer points from credit card rewards programs, the transfer will be completed in a matter of seconds. However, sometimes, the points may appear in your account balance but, when you go to complete an award booking, it says you don’t have enough points. This means that Emirates has placed a security flag on your account (to protect you from fraud) and you’ll need to call Emirates customer service to verify some account information. Then, you’ll be able to complete your booking right then over the phone or you can finish your booking online once you hang up.

Sign Up for an Emirates Co-Branded Credit Card

Another very effective way to rack up Emirates Skywards miles is to sign up for an Emirates co-branded credit card. There are currently two Emirates co-branded credit cards available to U.S. consumers (both of which are issued by Barclays): the Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard® and the Emirates Skywards Rewards World Elite Mastercard®.

Both of these credit cards allow you to earn Skywards miles for every purchase you make. Plus, new cardmembers can earn tens of thousands of miles by spending a certain amount in the first few months after account opening. You can view the most updated welcome bonuses for the Emirates Premium card and the Emirates Rewards cards by visiting the Emirates or Barclays website.

As you can see, these welcome bonuses are great ways to rack up a lot of Skywards miles quickly. On top of that, these cards also offer bonuses for everyday spending as well as additional benefits to make your experience flying with Emirates more comfortable. The following table includes everything you need to know about these two cards:

In our opinion, if you’re going to sign up for one of these two cards, the Emirates Rewards card is the better option. Unfortunately, while the Premium card offers some excellent perks like Priority Pass lounge access and automatic Emirates Gold elite status, these perks just aren’t quite valuable enough to justify this card’s high $499 annual fee. The Emirates Rewards card, on the other hand, only charges $99 annually, has the same spending bonuses as its pricier counterpart and also comes with automatic Silver elite status.

Fly With Emirates and Partner Airlines

Another way to effectively earn Emirates Skywards miles is to take paid flights with either Emirates or one of its airline partners. While Emirates is not a member of any airline alliance, the Skywards program still has a solid list of partner airlines with which you can earn miles. Here’s the current list of airline with which you can earn Skywards miles for paid flights:

If you want to find out how many miles you could earn on a paid flight with either Emirates or Flydubai, you can use the Miles Calculator tool on the Emirates website, which allows you to enter your origin, destination, cabin class flight type and Skywards status and then see how many miles you’d earn.

If you want to know how many miles you’d earn with another partner airline, you can visit the Our Partners page from the Emirates website and then scroll down to see each partner’s earnings rate.

Other Ways to Earn

There are several other ways to earn Skywards miles aside from the three methods described above. Some of these other earning methods include renting cars, booking hotel stays, shopping online through the Skywards Miles Mall and purchasing miles with cash.

Unfortunately, none of these earning methods are particularly effective on their own. Nonetheless, if you’re planning on renting cars, staying at hotels or shopping online anyway, then it doesn’t hurt to earn some extra Skywards miles while you’re at it.

In general, purchasing miles with cash is a poor idea as you’ll usually have to pay more than the value you’ll get out of those miles.

How to Book Award Flights Through Emirates Skywards

Now that you’ve joined the Emirates Skywards program and earned some miles through the methods listed above, let’s look at how you can spend those miles on award flights.

The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Emirates website and sign in to your Skywards account using either your membership number or your email and your password.

There are two different processes you can go through to book award flights through the Emirates Skywards program depending on whether you wish to book an Emirates-operated award flight or a partner-operated award flight. So, let’s look at each of those processes individually.

Emirates Classic Award Flights

When you book a flight on Emirates entirely with Skywards miles, it’s known as a Classic Reward. These Classic Rewards flights are very easy to search for and to book.

Start from the homepage of the Emirates website. On this page, you’ll see the flight search tool that you’d use to book cash flights. This same tool can be used to search for award flights. All you have to do is check the “Classic rewards” box.

Once you’ve checked that box, enter your flight details, including your origin, destination, travel dates, whether you’re flying one-way or round-trip, the number of passengers and your preferred cabin class. Then, click the “Continue” button to conduct your award search.

From there, you’ll be redirected to a list of results that match your search query. If no matching results exist, you’ll be asked to change the parameters of your search. On the list of results, you’ll be able to see important information about each flight, including the flight time, whether there are any stops, the operating airlines, the required number of miles and any applicable taxes and fees.

From this list of results, you can choose an outgoing flight and then a return flight that best meets your needs. Once you’ve selected your flights, click the “View summary” button at the top-right corner of the screen to view your selected flights as well as the total number of miles required and the total taxes and fees.

If the flights and cost look good to you, click the “Continue to Passengers” button on the bottom of the page.

On this next page, you’ll be asked to enter passenger information, such as name, date of birth, country of residence, email, phone number and passport number (if applicable). After that, you’ll need to provide payment information to cover any applicable taxes and fees.

Then, you can confirm your redemption and you should receive your flight confirmation number in your email shortly after. When it’s time to check in for your flight, you’ll need to provide this confirmation number in order to get your boarding pass.

Partner Reward Flights

The process for booking partner award flights through Emirates Skywards is slightly more complicated than booking Emirates Classic Rewards. To book partner awards, you’ll need to go to the homepage where you’ll find the flight search tool. Once there, you’ll need to click the red hyperlink that says “Advanced search: multi-city, promo codes, partner airlines.”

This link will redirect you to another page where you’ll be able to search for partner award flights. There are three tabs on this page for Return, One-Way and Advanced Search. The Advanced Search tab is useful if you want to book a multi-city itinerary or open-jaw ticket. The other two tabs are self-explanatory. You should choose the corresponding tab for the type of award that you want to book.

From there, enter your departing and arriving airports, flight dates, number of passengers and preferred cabin class. Once the information in these fields is correct, click on the “Search” button.

From there, the process is pretty much identical to booking Emirates Classic Rewards except that the flight results displayed will also include flights operated by partner airlines. Then, you can choose the flights that work best for you, enter your passenger information, enter your payment information and confirm your booking just as you would with an Emirates Classic Reward.

The Bottom Line

All in all, the Emirates Skywards program is an above-average frequent flyer program and one that’s worth being familiar with. This program offers a wide variety of ways to earn miles, including transferring points from most of the major credit card rewards programs. So, if you have a rewards card from Amex, Capital One, Chase or Citi, there may be many instances in which the best way to book a flight is by transferring points to the Emirates Skywards program.

You can also rack up Emirates Skywards miles by signing up for one of the two Barclays-issued Emirates co-branded credit cards that are available in the United States. However, we’d only advise signing up for one of these cards if you fly with Emirates often and you’re interested in getting Emirates elite status. Otherwise, these cards probably aren’t worth their annual fees.

When it comes time to book an award flight with the Skywards miles that you’ve earned, the process is fairly simple. Unfortunately, there are two separate processes for searching for Emirates-operated award flights and partner-operated award flights, which makes comparing award flights from all available airlines more difficult.

Nonetheless, you can get high value for your Skywards miles by redeeming them for award flights. And, if you need help through the process, you can always refer to this article.