Etihad Guest Award Booking Instructions

While Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, isn’t a member of one of the three major airline alliances, the Emirati airline has many individual partnerships with major airlines like Air Canada, American Airlines, Korean Air and more. For this reason, the Etihad Guest frequent flyer program is still worth paying attention to for travelers based in North America and around the world.

Members of the Etihad Guest program can earn Etihad miles with any of these airline partners. And the Etihad Guest program is a transfer partner of several of the major credit card rewards programs, including American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. This means that earning Etihad miles is fairly easy. Unfortunately, over the past few years, Etihad has devalued its partner award chart, making it more and more difficult to find high-value redemptions.

Nonetheless, you can often still find good award flight redemptions through the Etihad Guest program with some searching. So, in this article, we’re going to walk you through the step-by-step process of making an award flight booking through the Etihad Guest program.

Joining Etihad Guest

Before you start booking award flights through the Etihad Guest program, you’ll have to be a member. To create an account, go to the Etihad Airways website and click the “Etihad Guest” button near the top-right corner of the homepage.

You’ll then be redirected to the Etihad Guest homepage, where you’ll see a button that says “Join” near the top-right corner of the page.

On the next page, you’ll need to input some personal information, including your name, date of birth and email. Then, accept the terms and conditions and click the “Sign up” button in order to join the program.

Once you’ve done all that, you’ll be sent an activation email to the address you entered in the previous form. This email will contain your Etihad Guest membership number, which you should save somewhere for future use. Click the “Activate your account” button in that email to continue the enrollment process.

This button will lead you to a new page where you’ll need to verify your account by entering your country of residence, your phone number, your address and a password.

On this page, you can also set your preferences for how you’ll be contacted, whether or not you want to receive marketing texts and emails from Etihad’s partners and more. Finally, click the “Complete the form to continue” button, and you’ll be a registered member of the Etihad Guest program with your own unique membership number.

How To Earn Etihad Miles

As a member of the Etihad Guest program, you’re eligible to earn and redeem rewards miles. However, before you start purchasing award flights, you’ll need to have enough miles in your account to purchase an award flight. Award flight redemptions start at 5,000 miles, which means you’ll need to have at least 5,000 miles in your account to purchase an award flight.

There are many ways to earn miles through the Etihad Guest program. However, some earning methods are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’re going to briefly look at a few of the most effective ways to earn Etihad miles.

Transfer Credit Card Points

Several major credit card rewards programs allow you to transfer points to the Etihad Guest program. And, for most North America-based consumers, this is going to be the best way to earn Etihad miles, assuming that you don’t use Etihad Guest as your primary frequent flyer program. American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards all allow you to transfer points to the Etihad Guest program at a 1:1 ratio.

For example, let’s say that you have 60,000 American Express Membership Rewards points in your Amex account. You could transfer those points to the Etihad Guest program at a 1:1 ratio and receive 60,000 Etihad miles in your Etihad Guest account within seconds.

Flying With Etihad Airways and Partner Airlines

Another effective way to earn Etihad miles is to take paid flights with Etihad Airways or one of its airline partners. In order to earn miles on flights, you’ll need to credit your flight to the Etihad Guest program by selecting it as your frequent flyer program of choice and entering your membership number, either when making your booking or when checking in.

When flying with Etihad Airways, the number of miles that you’ll earn for each flight depends on your fare class, the actual distance of your flight in miles and whether you have elite status in the Etihad Guest program. The following table explains how many miles you’ll earn in each fare class:

For instance, if you took a flight of 2,000 miles on Etihad Airways in Business Choice Plus (fare code J), you’d earn 4,000 base miles (2,000 miles flown x 200% = 4,000 Etihad miles). Silver elite status members earn 25% bonus miles on Etihad flights, Gold members earn 50% bonus miles and Platinum and Emerald members earn 100% bonus miles.

You can also earn Etihad miles on paid flights with Etihad’s airline partners. As mentioned earlier, Etihad Airways isn’t a member of any airline alliance. However, it does have many partnerships with other airlines, including the following:

You can earn Etihad miles by crediting flights with any of the airlines listed above to the Etihad Guest program. How many miles you’ll earn with each partner is determined by each partner’s unique earnings chart, which you can find on the “Earn miles with our partners” page of the Etihad Guest website by clicking on the logo of the partner you want to fly with.
These charts work the same way as the Etihad Airways earning chart. To find out how many miles you’ll earn, multiply the distance of your flight (in miles) by the percentage associated with your fare class. It’s worth noting that flights with certain partner airlines will earn elite status bonuses.

Other Ways To Earn

There are plenty of other ways to earn miles through the Etihad Guest program, including transferring points from hotel loyalty programs, booking hotel stays, renting cars, buying merchandise from retail partners and purchasing miles with cash.

Unfortunately, none of these earning methods are particularly effective and some of them are actually unadvisable, such as transferring points from hotel programs or purchasing miles. However, if you plan on renting a car, booking a hotel or buying merchandise anyway, it might be a good idea to earn a few Etihad miles while you’re at it.

How To Book Award Flights Through Etihad Guest

Now that you know how to join Etihad Guest and how to earn miles, you’re ready to redeem those miles for an award flight. The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Etihad Guest website (which you can access by clicking the “Etihad Guest” tab on the homepage of the Etihad Airways website) and log in to your account.

Once you’ve logged in, choose the “Redeem miles” option from the drop-down menu on the Etihad Guest homepage. At the top of the next page, you’ll choose the “Flying” option from the toolbar.

On the next page, click the “Book your flights now” button to access the award flight search tool. Using this tool is essentially the same as searching for cash flights. Enter your departure airport, arrival airport, type of flight (round-trip or one-way), number of passengers, cabin class and travel dates. Then, click the “Search flights” button.

You’ll be shown a list of flights that match your search query, including flights operated by Etihad Airways or any of its airline partners. You can see important information about each available award flight such as that flight’s departure and arrival airport, operating airline, departure and arrival times and flight duration. You can also filter these results by a number of factors, including number of stops, departure time, operating airline and more.

Once you find a flight you like, add it to your itinerary by clicking on the price to the right of the flight in the column for the cabin class you want to book. When you click on that price, a new information window will appear where you’ll need to click the “Continue” button to add the flight to your itinerary. Repeat this process for your return flight if you’re flying round-trip.

After you’ve selected your flights, you’ll see a summary of the total number of Etihad miles required and the total taxes and fees for the flights you’ve selected. If everything looks good, continue to the next page where you’ll enter personal information for any passengers on the itinerary, including name, date of birth, email address and phone number.

Finally, you’ll need to add a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees. It’s worth mentioning that taxes and fees will be displayed in whatever currency is used by the airline you’re flying with. For instance, if you’re flying with Air Canada, you’ll see the taxes and fees in Canadian dollars.

Once you’ve added a payment method, confirm your flight booking and you’ll receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in for your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email with this number.

The required number of miles for your flight will be immediately deducted from your Etihad Guest balance. If you cancel your booking up to 24 hours before your flight’s scheduled departure, you should be able to get all of your miles refunded.

The Bottom Line

While the Etihad Guest program has experienced some unfortunate devaluations over the past several years, there’s still a lot of positives about this program that make it worth paying attention to for North American consumers. For one, the Etihad Guest program uses a single award chart to price all partner award flights, meaning that it’s possible to find outsized value when redeeming Etihad miles.

And, although Etihad Airways isn’t currently a member of any airline alliance, the Emirati airline still has some individual partnerships with great airlines such as Air Canada, American Airlines, Korean Air and more. This means you can earn and redeem Etihad miles with any of these airlines. Additionally, you can transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards or Citi ThankYou Rewards at a 1:1 ratio to the Etihad Guest program, making Etihad miles easy to earn.

All in all, while the Etihad Guest program probably won’t be your primary frequent flyer program, over the course of your travel-hacking career, you may end up booking a flight through this program once or twice. And if you need help booking your flight, you can always refer to the step-by-step instructions in this article.