Is it worth converting Emirates Skywards miles INTO Heathrow Rewards points?

Emirates Skywards has been a Heathrow Rewards transfer partner for many years.

The transfer rate is the same as for Heathrow’s other airline partners.  250 Heathrow Rewards points gets you 250 Emirates Skywards miles.

What is surprising is that you can also transfer Emirates Skywards miles INTO Heathrow Rewards. This is novel, with only Lufthansa Miles & More offering anything similar. The details are here on the Emirates website.

How do transfers of Emirates Skywards miles into Heathrow Rewards work?

Here are the rules:

• Emirates Skywards miles must be converted in blocks of 6,000 miles

• The conversion rate is 3:1 so 6,000 miles gets you 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points

• The maximum conversion per transaction is 54,000 Emirates Skywards miles

As 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points gets you a £20 airport shopping voucher, you are getting 0.33p per mile.

As you get double value if you redeem Heathrow Rewards points for airport parking vouchers, you would be getting 0.66p per Skywards mile if you redeemed this way.

This is what you must remember:

You CANNOT convert Heathrow Rewards points gained via Emirates into airline miles. This is NOT a backdoor way of converting Emirates Skywards miles into Avios, Virgin Points or any other Heathrow Rewards airline partner.

How does it work in practice?

Just before Christmas I tried this out. A friend had 9,000 expiring Emirates Skywards miles and no easy way of using them, so a transfer into £20 of Heathrow Rewards credit seemed the best worst option for him.

My first surprise was that the transfer from Emirates Skywards was INSTANT.  I set up the transfer for him, logged into a newly created Heathrow Rewards account and the 2,000 points were there, plus the 100 points opening bonus:

I went over to the Avios conversion page.  I got this message:

…. which confirms that, despite have 2,100 Heathrow Rewards points, he didn’t have the minmum 250 of ‘qualifying’ points required to transfer them to Avios, which was true.

The points are now sitting there waiting for him to redeem them on his next trip to the airport.

Conclusion

This IS an easy way of using up some spare Emirates Skywards miles (minimum 6,000) if they are about to expire.

It is NOT an excellent way of getting good value for your Skywards miles in any other circumstances. 0.33p per point is very poor. I would expect to get 1p+ when redeeming for premium cabin flights on Emirates or one of its partners.

There are also other ways of using up small amounts of Emirates Skywards miles – Arsenal football tickets and redeeming for easyJet flights.

You CANNOT use this as a method of converting Skywards miles into Avios by laundering them through Heathrow Rewards – the IT works and those redemptions are blocked off.

Find out more on the Emirates website here.

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How to earn Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards (March 2024)

Emirates Skywards does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Emirates Skywards miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.

Cards earning Membership Rewards points include:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 20,000 Emirates Skywards miles. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with four free airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 40,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 40,000 Emirates Skywards miles

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 10,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 10,000 Emirates Skywards miles. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Emirates Skywards miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Emirates Skywards mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it.