Air Canada Aeroplan is continuing to add additional airline partners beyond the scope of Star Alliance carriers, and that’s a good thing for the members when it comes to both collecting and redeeming miles, which now also includes Emirates.
Aeroplan members are now able to book award flights on Emirates in all classes of service, including their famed First Class Suites on the A380 – at a very steep rate!
Emirates has partnered with a whole range of different frequent flyer programs over the years where it was possible to earn and redeem miles, including (a long time ago) Mileage Plus, Alaska Mileage Plan now Aeroplan, and of course, the codeshare partnership they have with Qantas.
Since Aeroplan loaded award availability, it got me curious how much awards would cost when using Aeroplan miles to book Emirates flights.
I didn’t expect a bargain but the premium cabin prices are pretty steep, especially in First Class.
Here an example for Hong Kong-Dubai:
And an equally outrageous price for Hong Kong-Bangkok:
The business class option for 30,000 miles isn’t all that bad but of course you can buy this ticket as a fifth freedom route for rather little money.
In comparison to redemptions with Emirates Skywards directly, this is quite interesting because the First Class redemption is available for 20,000 miles less while Business Class is 9,000 miles more:
Especially interesting is that with Emirates Skywards, First Class is only 6,000 miles more compared to Business, so you can just as well use First if availability is there.
This is the Aeroplan based Emirates Award Chart:
The spread is pretty vast here, and the reason for the expensive HKG-BKK rates is that it falls under category 1 (up to 2,000 miles), but the route is really just half the distance.
Aeroplan’s fees in Canadian Dollars are better than Skywards, though.
The bottom line here is that Aeroplan in the very least, gained an additional airline partner (now close to 50 total), which is great for availability across the board.
Conclusion
I’m surprised that Emirates has made First Class awards available on Aeroplan, as that’s a rarity these days as far as partners are concerned. It’s pretty much impossible to find this on any other Emirates partner programs (such as Japan Airlines Mileage Bank where F Awards disappeared in the Fall of 2021).
At the same time the Aeroplan portfolio became more valuable as Emirates is a rather practical parter airline to be added. Those members with large stacks of miles can certainly find decent redemptions there and if one is really looking for First Class then finding availability within Star Alliance is increasingly difficult. Right now out of all Star Alliance Airlines, only ANA, Lufthansa and SWISS and Thai operate First Class anymore. SWISS can only be booked with Miles&More (Senator/HON) miles and THAI has very limited routes as they unfortunately dropped their A380s. So Emirates as an addition does represent real value here despite the higher prices.
Are you going to book Emirates flights with your Aeroplan miles?
