In case you skipped it, Emirates is improving it’s San Francisco and Houston routes on December 1st and 3rd, respectively. The path happens to be serviced by Boeing 777-300ER’s, and you will be upgrading to the big leagues, with daily Airbus A380 plane tickets to and from Dubai. Exactly what does that mean for you? First Class capacity will be increasing 75% from 8 suites to 14 suites, with no changes to the collection itself as both planes features Emirates’ closed suite product. But, the best part concerning this change isn’t the excess capacity, it is the upgrade to the First Class cabin.
The A380 features Emirates’ personal Shower Spa experience, with two on-board showers staffed by a separate bathroom attendant that cleans them after every use. 21,000 to spare and plan to book the Etihad Residence, this is actually the only commercial on-board shower you will discover in the sky. I appreciated every minute of the 4-minute shower on my trip last year. Currently, the only US routes serviced by the A380 are LA (LAX) and New York(JFK), and it’s next to impossible to find award seats on those routes more than a couple weeks out.
However, on the new SFO and IAH routes to Dubai, HIGH GRADE award availability still appears pretty darn good, with plenty of showers to be had for any. Here’s the award availability for a random week in March. Through the Alaska Airlines’ website, 2 seats on the A380 are available from SFO to Dubai on March 13th as an example.
- Town of Oregon
- 8 years relevant experience with 3 at Senior level
- Specialized services in technology, creativity and entrepreneurial development
- Scientific study of different methods of doing work
- 6 years ago from Camden, South Carolina
- After installing the exe run the crmdevelopertools_installer.msi
- Has a interest to develop software that delights our customers
- BA (Honours) Business Management (Economics)
Not so fast, as I wrote about before, phantom First Class prize availability has been known to show up while looking on the Alaska Airlines website. Cross-referencing against Expertflyer results validates that there are 2 seats available indeed. In fact, during that week, 4 from the seven days had at least 1 HIGH GRADE seat available, with 2 seats available on 2 from the 7 days.
That’s as effective as it gets nowadays. A similar story from Houston (IAH), where during that same week there is certainly even better availability with 2 HIGH GRADE seats on 5 from the seven days! Emirates honours are bookable using Emirates, Korean Air, Japan Airlines, and Alaska Airlines mls.
Since Korean Air miles cannot be used for First Class awards and Emirates Skywards miles are cost-prohibitive, Alaska Airlines and JAL are regarded as the best option for reserving your shower generally. For example, HIGH GRADE awards to the Middle East will cost 90, 000 Alaska Airlines kilometers each real way. However, for just an incremental 10,000 miles, you can add on a supplementary segment which is often on another A380, to either Asia or Africa. As an extra bonus, Alaska Airlines allows stopovers on one-way tickets, which we took benefit of to invest a couple of days in Dubai on a recently available trip.