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There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the past few days as Alaska Airlines increased the cost of some Emirates First Class awards by between 67% and 100% without any notice whatsoever. One of the better award redemption opportunities disappeared overnight and caught a lot of people off guard (as the move was designed to do). Deals come and deals go, that’s the nature of this game and the best way to move on is to find a good deal elsewhere. Here’s a good deal you may enjoy.
Emirates has a fantastically attractive fare on offer right now for Business Class travel between Milan and New York on its A380 aircraft (the one everyone wants to fly).
Emirates has this route thanks to fifth freedom rules which allow a carrier to fly between two cities which are not in the airline’s county of origin and this route is always worth watching.
Emirates Business Class Fare
The route: Milan (MXP) – New York (JFK) Non-Stop
Fare: Starting at $1,899 Return (at the time of writing)
Travel dates: Now – 15 December 2016
Book by: 21 April 2016
This is a truly excellent fare for anyone looking to try out Emirates’ best Business Class product and the fact that the travel period is so broad is a very nice bonus too.
Availability is fantastic and the minimum/maximum stop over rules mean that, as long as you select your departure days carefully, most trip lengths (of a month or less) can be booked:
Here’s what the availability looks like for a few randomly selected months:
Emirates Business Class Availability Milan – New York (May 2016)
Emirates Business Class Availability Milan – New York (July 2016)
Emirates Business Class Availability Milan – New York (November 2016)
Emirates Business Class Availability Milan – New York (December 2016)
The search I performed was for trips between 2 and 9 nights long (I’ll show all my parameters later in this post) so you can see from the screenshots above just how plentiful availability is and how most travelers should be able to find something that works for them.
There’s nothing bad about the routing or the flight times either:
And for those wondering how easy these flight are to book, here’s a screenshot from Orbitz:
This isn’t a phantom fare…this is very real 🙂
Searching For The Fares
You can search for the dates that work best for you on any of the online travel sites (Orbitz, Expedia etc…) but my preferred method, as always, is the ITA Matrix tool.
You can’t book tickets via ITA Matrix but it’s my preferred way of searching for great fares. I’ve written an introduction to using the tool here and a few more advanced tips here.
Here is a screenshot of the search parameters I used:
The dates, length of stay and currency are jut placeholders so you should change those to whatever suits you best – the rest is pretty self-explanatory.
Emirates Business Class A380
Contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe, Emirates’ Business Class cabins are not much to get excited about….unless you’re traveling on one of the airlines many A380 aircraft. This is their flagship Business Class product and the best you’ll see the airline offer.
The A380 that Emirates flys on this Milan – New York route has 76 Business Class seats on the upper deck of the aircraft laid out in a staggered formation just like in the Etihad Airbus A380 Business Class cabin….
….and that means that the same rules apply in the Emirates cabin as in the Etihad cabin – some seats are better than others with seats next to the windows (odd-numbered rows) being best for solo travelers while the centre seats in the odd-numbered rows are best for couples traveling together.
Emirates Business Class Seat Airbus A380 – Image courtesy of Luke Lai via Flickr
Emirates Business Class Seat Airbus A380 – Image courtesy of Luke Lai via Flickr
Bottom Line
This is a great Business Class fare to find as it’s one of the cheapest Europe – USA fares I’ve found on Emirates. While not everything on the airline is as fantastic as hype and great marketing will have you believe, the Business Class product on the A380 is very good indeed.
The “cheap” Emirates First Class awards booked via Alaska Airlines may be gone but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other good value ways to fly in an Emirates premium cabin – all you have to do is look.
