The Aegean Hack to Get Cheap Emirates Business Class

Aegean Airlines, a Star Alliance member based in Greece, recently launched a new partnership with Emirates. You can now redeem Aegean Miles+Bonus miles for Emirates flights in both Economy and Business Class.

This is a particularly interesting development because Aegean Miles+Bonus has an extremely competitive region-based award chart. The program has some nifty loopholes that you could exploit to fly long-haul Business Class on Emirates for a surprisingly low number of miles.

You cannot redeem miles for Emirates Premium Economy or First Class, and Aegean’s website is not the most functional. The upshot is that you can access some pretty unbeatable value if you redeem Aegean miles wisely.

Unfortunately, Aegean does pass on Emirates’ high carrier charges. But these don’t apply on most of Emirates’ fifth-freedom routes.

What you need to know about Aegean Miles+Bonus award bookings

With the Aegean Miles+Bonus program, award flights on partner airlines (including Emirates and Star Alliance partners) are priced according to a region-based chart. This means the number of miles you need for a reward booking is fixed, based on which “zone” you’re starting your trip in and where your final destination is.

This is the award chart, which shows round-trip award prices:

Aegean also allows one-way award flight bookings for half the number of miles shown in the award chart.

What’s worth noticing here is that Business Class reward flights within a single zone cost a relatively low number of miles. It’s also worth noting that some of the zones cover a huge area. For example, the whole of Central & South America is a single zone.

This article about buying and redeeming Aegean Miles+Bonus miles has more details and a colour-coded map showing which countries are in each zone.

There are also a few award routing rules to be aware of:

• You can have up to one transit (up to 24 hours), which could be in any zone, and the number of miles required is just based on where you start and end your journey
• En-route stopovers of more than 24 hours are not permitted

If you want to book an itinerary with two or more transits, it’s possible but the number of miles required will drastically increase. So, it’s best to stick with direct or one-stop flights. But that’s not an issue if you just want to fly with Emirates from, to or via Dubai!

Transiting via another region

Remember how I just said that you can transit via another region without this impacting the number of miles required for your award booking? This works even if you’re travelling within a single zone… as long as the Aegean website suggests it as an available routing.

For example, you could fly Emirates Business Class from anywhere in Africa to anywhere else in Africa, via Dubai, for just 21,000 Aegean miles + taxes & charges:

Admittedly, the carrier charges do add a fair bit to the cost. But the above example is still an amazing deal compared to the ~AU$6,200 Emirates normally charges for a one-way Business Class ticket from Mauritius to Dakar! Going via Dubai, this route covers over 13,000km.

I realise there probably aren’t too many Australians interested in flying from Mauritius to Senegal. But this loophole works with many, many other routes as well.

Europe to North Africa via Dubai for 25,000 miles in Business Class

Let’s look at another example which might be a bit more useful to AFF readers. A one-way Business Class award within the “Europe & North Africa” zone costs just 25,000 Aegean miles, and yes… you can go via Dubai!

In this example, you could fly over 7 hours in Emirates Business Class from Newcastle, UK to Dubai, stay overnight in Dubai, and then fly the next morning over 8 hours in Emirates Business (on the A380, no less) from Dubai to Morocco. It costs the same number of miles as you’d pay to book Euro-Business via Frankfurt!

As a point of comparison, Qantas Frequent Flyer (which charges for Classic Reward flights based on the total distance you actually fly) wants 119,200 Qantas Points (and similar surcharges) for the same redemption. That’s 477% more points.

A similar routing to Casablanca via Dubai (or vice versa) is possible from many other European airports including Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Manchester, Brussels and Dublin.

By the way, the same trick also works for booking Turkish Airlines from anywhere in Europe or North Africa to anywhere else in Europe/North Africa, via Istanbul. Or with EgyptAir via Cairo. The surcharges are much lower with those airlines, too.

Booking Emirates Business Class to/from Australia or New Zealand

It costs 55,000 Aegean miles to fly Business Class between Dubai and Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland or Christchurch. Again, the carrier charges are unfortunately quite high… but still much lower than the cost of a Business Class ticket.

Interestingly, it also costs 55,000 miles to fly Business Class from Australia or New Zealand to pretty much anywhere in Asia… via Dubai. And the extra charges are about the same as just booking to Dubai. For example, you could fly Perth-Dubai-Kuala Lumpur in Emirates Business for 55,000 Aegean miles + €720.87 (~AU$1,271).

Auckland-Dubai is one of Emirates’ longest flights, so booking this with miles is also a very decent deal.

Fly from Australia to Europe for 75,000 miles in Business Class

It would cost 75,000 Aegean miles to fly from Australia or New Zealand to Europe in Business Class, plus around ~AU$1,930 in taxes & charges.

Again, while the surcharges are a bit of a killer, this still compares favourably to the cost of buying a full-price cash ticket!

Low surcharges when redeeming on Emirates fifth-freedom routes

Emirates does not impose high carrier surcharges on its 16 fifth-freedom routes which do not start or end in Dubai. For example, Sydney-Christchurch on the A380 in Business Class costs 21,000 miles and ~AU$195, of which most is third-party taxes.

Milan-New York is also not bad value:

And the extra charges on the Malta-Larnaca route are just ~AU$35.

Aegean Airlines website quirks

You can search for availability and book Emirates award flights on the Aegean Airlines website. You will need to log in to your Miles+Bonus account (it’s free to join) to search for award flights.

Note there are two somewhat annoying quirks to be aware of.

Firstly, the website has a habit of warning you that one of the Emirates flights in your itinerary is not available in your selected cabin class, even if it is. Don’t worry too much about this; you can verify which cabin class you’re actually booking in the “Fare family” field of the trip summary after clicking on the flight you want.

When you search for flights, the website might also show you a calendar of available dates and then not let you proceed if you don’t already have enough miles in your account to complete a booking. If this happens, simply click “Back to search”, re-enter your details and click “Search” again. This time (and in subsequent searches), you’ll be able to view all the available flights.

How to earn Aegean Miles+Bonus miles

Unfortunately, there isn’t a super-cheap way to earn large quantities of Aegean Miles+Bonus miles in Australia. But there are a few options…

Flying with Star Alliance

Of course, you can earn Aegean miles by crediting eligible Star Alliance flights to the Miles+Bonus program.

As it happens, Aegean Miles+Bonus is also one of the best Star Alliance loyalty programs for earning status. So, if you fly a fair bit on Star Alliance and don’t want to get a HSBC Star Alliance credit card, you might even consider using Miles+Bonus as your primary Star Alliance program.

Buying Aegean miles

Aegean sells miles for €25 (~AU$44) per thousand, and you can buy up to 30,000 miles per year. The annual purchase limit increases to 50,000 miles if you’ve ever credited at least one flight to your Miles+Bonus account.

For example, it would cost €625 (~AU$1,100) to buy 25,000 Aegean miles at full price.

While Aegean does occasionally offer discounts or bonuses to bring the cost of its miles down, these are unfortunately quite rare nowadays.

Transferring Marriott Bonvoy points to Aegean

Another option is to transfer points into Aegean Miles+Bonus from Marriott Bonvoy, a hotel loyalty program. For every 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points you transfer, you’d get 25,000 Aegean miles. (The transfer rate is 3:1 but you get a 25% bonus for every 60,000 Marriott points you convert in one go.)

You can buy up to 100,000 Marriott Bonvoy points per year. This increases to 150,000 points during Marriott’s regular promotions where you can earn up to a 50% bonus when buying points.

Right now, for example, Marriott Bonvoy is offering 40% bonus when you buy points. So, you could buy 43,000 points (and get 60,200 points after the bonus is applied) for USD537.50 (~AU$838). Remember that 60,000 Marriott points is worth 25,000 Aegean miles, so that’s a significantly cheaper way to buy those miles.

To give a specific example, you may recall that it costs 75,000 Aegean miles + ~AU$1,930 to fly Emirates Business Class from Sydney to Amsterdam. With the current 40% bonus, you could buy 180,000 Marriott points, which convert into 75,000 Aegean miles, for USD1,625 (~AU$2,535).

This brings the total cost of a one-way Emirates Business flight from Sydney to Amsterdam to under $4,500. Admittedly, that’s not insanely cheap… but it’s still more than a $3,000 discount compared to buying a one-way ticket.

Where the savings really come into their own is on some of those intra-zone redemptions that cost ridiculously few miles. Some fifth-freedom routes are also quite good value due to the low carrier charges.

Transferring Amex Points to Marriott Bonvoy

If you have a stack of Amex Membership Rewards Points, you can also take advantage of the Aegean hack to get cheap Emirates Business Class! Simply transfer your Amex Points into Marriott Bonvoy, and then from there into Aegean Miles+Bonus.

Amex Membership Rewards Points transfer at a 3:2 rate to Marriott, so you would need 90,000 Amex Points to get 25,000 Aegean miles. By comparison, 90,000 Amex Points would be worth 45,000 Velocity Points, 30,000 KrisFlyer miles or 30,000 Emirates Skywards miles. (Note that transfers from Amex to Emirates Skywards are currently temporarily unavailable.)

You can also book Emirates reward flights with Qantas Points

Booking Emirates flights with Aegean miles could be a worthwhile strategy for some people. But if you can’t be bothered collecting Aegean miles – and I wouldn’t blame you, to be honest – you can of course also redeem Qantas Points for Emirates flights. Plus, with Qantas Frequent Flyer, you also have the option to book First Class (at least for now, anyway)!

The number of Qantas Points you’d need to book an Emirates Economy or Business Class flight is generally much higher than an equivalent Aegean Miles+Bonus award. The upshot is that Qantas Points are much easier to earn in large quantities in Australia.

For example, you could earn up to 150,000 Qantas Points with a single credit card sign-up bonus. That alone would give you enough Qantas Points to fly Emirates Business Class one-way from Perth to Europe (plus the taxes & charges). And all without the hassle of trying to wrap your head around a Greek frequent flyer program!

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to more than 100 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.