How to fly Emirates Business Class on Points to Italy (or elsewhere!)

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Emirates is up there on the gold standard of airline experiences. It’s renowned for both an incredible hard product (the seats, the plane, and did I mention the ONBOARD BAR) and an outstanding soft product (the service, the food, the hospitality that makes you want to cry when you have to deplane).

Emirates: The Gold Standard of Airline Experiences

It’s a superior product, and it comes with a superior price tag. It’s not uncommon to see flights in the thousands or $10k+ range.

But we never pay full price for luxury travel, do we? 😏

Here’s one of my favorite tricks for flying Emirates Business Class on a discount:

How to Book Emirates For a Discount: Air Canada

Did you know that airlines have “partners”? They do this to expand routes, share resources, and create a more seamless travel experience for key customers (you fly one airline for a connection, then take another for the main route). Meaning, you can book on one airline’s website, and take the actual flight with one of its partners.

In this case, Emirates and Air Canada are partners (and you don’t even have to fly out of Canada). Air Canada often offers Emirates business class flights for fewer points than Emirates itself. For example, this flight from New York to Milan would cost you 87k points on Emirates:

On Air Canada, it only costs 76k points:

How to Earn Air Canada Aeroplan Points for Emirates

Don’t have any Aeroplan points?

Me neither. Capital One, Chase, Amex, and Bilt all transfer to Air Canada (see my favorite offers for these cards here). Simply head to your bank’s portal, click Transfer to Travel Partners, and select Aeroplan:

Then, book on Air Canada’s website.

As of writing this article, Chase is also offering a 20% transfer bonus until 7/31/23 to Air Canada, meaning to get the 76k points you need for Emirates, you’d only need to transfer 64k Chase points (I have a free guide on earning and redeeming Chase points here). You don’t need to travel by 7/31, just transfer your points by then.

Hope that helps and cheers to your next adventure! ✈️🥂

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