How do Emirates ‘My Family’ household accounts work?

Most people don’t realise that the British Airways style of family or household account is actually very rare.  Few other airlines let you pool 100% of the miles earned by your wider friends and family.

Until 2018, Emirates had a family policy that could best be described as a token gesture.  Your family were allowed to credit their miles to your account, but only at a rate of 20%.  All of the other miles were lost.

You had the weird situation where, for example, you and three family members could individually earn 10,000 Skywards miles each from a particular flight, or one person could earn 16,000 miles (10,000 + 2,000 + 2,000 + 2,000).  It wasn’t the greatest idea ever.

Emirates dropped that idea for ‘My Family’

Emirates now has a programme called ‘My Family’.  You can find the details here.  

Up to eight family members can come together.  They do need to be family and there is a list of acceptable relationships:

“Husband, Wife, Domestic Partner, Son, Step‑Son, Daughter, Step‑Daughter, Mother, Mother‑in‑Law, Step‑Mother, Father, Father‑in‑Law, Step‑Father, Brother, Sister, Granddaughter, Grandson and Domestic Helper.”

Going forward, you can agree that either 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of your miles earned go into the pooled ‘My Family’ pot.

It is not possible to return miles back to individual accounts once they have been placed in a ‘My Family’ account.  If someone leaves the account, the Skywards miles they contributed remain in the family pot.

How does ‘My Family’ work?

When ‘My Family’ first launched, Emirates only allowed you to pool miles from flights and NOT from partner activity such as credit cards.  As well as being hugely confusing to administer, this was also not practical for most people.

This is no longer the case.  Emirates now allows you to pool (almost) ALL miles, however they are earned, in your ‘My Family’ pot.

The only restriction is that you can’t pool miles you convert from a credit card partner such as American Express Membership Rewards.

There are still some snags though:

• You cannot pool your existing miles

• You will end up with two balances – your total before ‘My Family’ was set up (plus some of your future miles earned if you choose not to contribute 100% of future earnings to ‘My Family’) plus the new pool

• Some types of redemption are not possible from a ‘My Family’ pool (you are OK with Classic Reward flights, Cash+Miles, Instant Upgrades, charity donations and Skywards Exclusives events)

• Only the nominated ‘Family Head’ can make redemptions from the ‘My Family’ account

• The usual Emirates expiry rules apply, with a ‘hard’ expiry after three years regardless of activity in the meantime

One potential option would be to have 100% of miles from the flights of your children dropped into a ‘My Family’ account, whilst contributing nothing or only a small amount yourself.  It would give you easy access to the miles from your kids whilst preserving your own flexibility.

Conclusion

The current iteration of ‘My Family’ is better than the previous couple of efforts from Emirates, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes the obvious thing to do for members with dependents.

The British Airways model is cleaner and simpler, and to be honest it is something that BA doesn’t get much credit for. Household accounts are a lot rarer amongst the major frequent flyer schemes than you may think.

You can learn more about ‘My Family’ on the Emirates website here.

PS.  If you want to learn about the BA equivalent, we published this article on how British Airways household accounts work. Our article on Virgin Atlantic’s household accounts is here.

PPS. We published a complete guide to earning Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards which you can find here.