Emirates Massively Raises Carrier Charges

Emirates has massively increased the carrier charges that Qantas Frequent Flyer members need to pay when redeeming a reward seat, without warning. This is the airline-imposed surcharge that needs to be paid in addition to airport and government-levied fees and taxes when booking a Classic Reward flight.

For a round-trip Emirates Business Class reward flight from Perth to London, for example, you would now have to pay 278,000 Qantas points and almost $2,300 in taxes & charges per passenger! That’s around $1,000 more than you would’ve paid to book the same Qantas Frequent Flyer redemption yesterday.

Earlier this week, Emirates began increasing carrier charges on some routes when booking reward flights with the airline’s own Skywards miles. At the time, Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions were unaffected. But now, as Point Hacks has pointed out, the significantly increased co-payments that apply when redeeming points are being passed on to Qantas Frequent Flyer members as well.

How much have Emirates carrier charges increased by?

The amount of the increase to Emirates carrier charges varies by route. But in many cases, you’ll now need to pay significantly more to redeem your Qantas Frequent Flyer points for an Emirates Classic Flight Reward.

Of course, neither Emirates nor Qantas publishes a list of carrier charges – so it is not possible for frequent flyers to easily compare the old vs new rates. But below are a few examples we can give you of the old and new carrier charges.

Note that these amounts do not include other taxes & fees (such as government taxes), which also need to be paid in addition to the points required. These amounts are in AUD, are subject to change and are based on one-way flights, so double the amounts for round-trip pricing:

These carrier charges appear to roughly match those now charged to Emirates Skywards members when redeeming Skywards miles for an Emirates Classic Reward.

Using the Perth-London route as an example, a round-trip Business Class Classic Reward flying with Emirates via Dubai would now attract a whopping $2,296.70 in taxes, fees & carrier charges per passenger.

Of this amount, $1675.60 is carrier charges payable directly to Emirates. We can see this by clicking on “Flight amount breakdown” on the Qantas booking page:

To put this into perspective, you could buy a commercial Economy Class ticket on the same flights for over $500 less! However, redeeming Qantas points does still work out to be better value than paying approximately $8,000 for a commercial Business Class ticket.

Here’s another example that was posted by an AFF member:

I have EK reward seats MEL-SEA (F) at the time of booking the fees and taxes were AUD634, checking today it would be AUD1308 for the same flights.
– Matt_01, 5 March 2022

Another blow for Qantas Frequent Flyer members

In September 2020, Qantas Frequent Flyer increased the number of points required to book a Classic Flight Reward on Emirates. At the time, Qantas justified this by saying that Emirates had recently reduced its carrier charges, so members would still get better overall value in many cases.

Of course, now that Emirates has massively increased its carrier charges, there are no changes to the number of Qantas points required to book an Emirates flight.

At least when Qantas Frequent Flyer increased the points required to book on Emirates, it gave its members three months of notice. There was no warning whatsoever about this latest change.

Other options for travel to the Middle East

As an alternative for flights to the Middle East, Qantas Frequent Flyer members can also redeem points for Qatar Airways flights. But Qatar Airways limits Business Class award availability for Qantas Frequent Flyer members to just one seat per flight to and from Australia.

As another option, you could redeem Velocity points to fly with Etihad Airways from Sydney or Melbourne to Abu Dhabi. Etihad Airways releases up to two Business Class reward seats per flight to Velocity members.

Qatar Airways and Etihad also impose their own carrier charges, but these generally won’t be as high as Emirates’ ridiculous new carrier charges.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Emirates hikes up carrier charges on reward seats

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & 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.