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Emirates has announced the introduction of family pooling of miles. With the new program, up to 8 members can be in a family group and pool their award miles. Members can choose whether to share all the miles they earn or just a percentage.
As is typical with most airline pooling programs, you can only pool award miles, not status miles; the exception being EgyptAir which also lets you combine Status Miles.
Key Details
- One member creates a family account, and they are designated as the family head
- They invite other family members over 18 years old (who must be enrolled in Emirates Skywards) to join the family account
- When accepting the invitation to join the family, members can select what percentage of the miles they earn goes into the family account; the rest goes into their personal accounts
- Family heads can directly add members who are under 18
Who Counts As Family?
The following relations of the family head can join the family account:
- Husband
- Wife
- Partner
- Son
- Step-Son
- Daughter
- Step-Daughter
- Mother
- Mother-in-Law
- Step-Mother
- Father
- Father-in-Law
- Step-Father
How Many Miles Can You Contribute?
Members have the option to allocate a percentage of their earned miles to the family account, while the rest goes into their individual account. You can set the following percentages:
- 25%
- 50%
- 75%
- 100%
After your initial joining and logging-in, you can reset your contribution to the family account to 0%.
Our Take
Family pooling is a nice bonus since a family vacation once or twice a year isn't out of the norm. Being able to credit all those miles to one account will help ensure you won't have to worry about errant miles being lost/forgotten. It's nice to see another rewards program added to the list of programs that allow you to combine points and miles at no cost!
Source: Emirates.com
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This is a great feature that I also like with Jetblue and Hilton. I wish they would also allow for the extension of the expiry of the miles if there is activity in the account. As of now that is not the case.
Yes, for my tastes, this new, positive benefit, unfortunately, still does not overcome the expiration problem caused by no extensions for activity.
Brilliant to see this news, every loyalty programme should allow family pooling of points.
I wish the US carriers would do this!
oh interesting. I thought it’d be a transfer after someone would travel. It looks like it’s only earning miles from the flight into the family account and not if someone already has miles? For instance, like Hilton lets my husband build up points and then I can transfer them into my account.
Not holding my breath, but it would be great to see the US legacy carriers begin to allow pooling as well.
Virgin Australia also lets you pool status credits. They partner with Delta.
Family pooling is nice, but I remain hesitant to commit to the program given its inflated redemption rates, significant “fuel” surcharges, and draconian points expiration policy. Much rather credit flights to Alaska…
While I love family pooling accounts, Emirates doesn’t exactly have the best frequent flyer program.
It certainly makes things easier when miles can be pooled like this, rather than losing all those orphan miles. Thanks for the info about EgyptAir (i.e. pooling status miles) too!
Great options for families! I hope other airlines copy this.
Wow! Love this, looking forward to more airlines taking this approach.
Looks like a great benefit!
great idea
hope others follow suit
I like the Hilton point pooling better wherein you can transfer after earning the points.
Great news, it’s like to pool cash from all family members’ wallets – you got richer!
I’m’ wondering – do you think it can produce domino effect and make US airlines to introduce pooling?
I’d like my odds at one of the multi-state lottery games better.
So you’re saying there is a chance. 🙂 I like Egyptairs policy that you can pool status miles with a family account, very interesting.
I’ll never knock any program for making smart changes like this. We can harp on them for other issues, but certainly this is a good thing.
This is a very good thing. We can knock them for other issues, but this is a good thing for travelers.
Great idea to pool the miles. Will be interesting to see if US carriers will follow suit at some point.
nice.. hopefully US carriers will follow.
Fantastic feature indeed!
I doubt I’ll ever use Emirates, but the more programs with family pooling, the better. So far, I’m limited to JetBlue and Hyatt, but maybe I should look into British Airways because of the network of Airlines the miles are usable at.
Excellent idea, hope it spreads.
Family pooling is one of the best options a program can have. Allows folks to utilize their points more efficiently
i wish Lufthansa would do this. Very nice for less frequent fliers
Interesting concept. I wish other airlines did that.
This is a good Thing for a family with members who regularly wind up with a few “orphan” miles.
Nice feature, but too late for me…We had 8k miles both – that’s not enough alone and couldn’t combine..so the expired…
Great feature on a still bad mileage program.
We always love the fact that some carriers now allow pooling of miles, especially as we find it harder to collect Emirates points so will offer a great boost to redeeming.
This seems more and more common for the ME and Gulf carriers. Is this more a culture thing? I don’t see it every sticking with the western Airlines where it doesn’t already exist.
Asian/South Pacific airlines allow this too — and in the US we have JetBlue and of course, BA does this as well. Definitely not a culture thing. You don’t see it with Western airlines because I don’t think they see value in it for them.
This may be of value to some, but our only flights on Emirates are award flights, so nothing gained by us.
Love this idea! Love the fact that some carriers allow pooling of miles. It a cool idea because my miles and my husbands are about to expire and now we can combine so, I guess were lucky on that one!
I would love to see U.S. airlines offer this.
Stick with JetBlue!
I appreciate that programs offer this but Emirates’ program doesn’t seem especially great on the redemption side.
Exactly, I don’t see why accruing miles on Emirates. I see no sweet spots. Maybe to redeem on soccer tickets.
This is a nice option for families but since other parts of the Emirates program have poor benefits (expiration of miles, surcharges) I would still choose to credit the flights to a partner. The few times that I will ever use Emirates would pretty much ensure that my miles would expire before I got to use them.
This might be useful
I hope this starts a trend in the industry now
Let’s hope the competition follows this new trend!
The pooling of miles is a nice feature.
Anyway, the Emirates Skywards is not one of my favourite airline frequent flyers. Actually it’s the opposite!