50% bonus converting Emirates Skywards miles to Heathrow Rewards points – worth it?

Heathrow Rewards has launched an interesting promotion – a 50% bonus when you convert your Emirates Skywards miles INTO Heathrow Rewards points.

This deal runs until 6th November.  It is not showing yet on the Heathrow Rewards website but it is featured on the Emirates website here.

Heathrow Rewards gives you 1 point for every £1 spent in Heathrow (1 per £10 on foreign exchange) or on Heathrow Express tickets (online bookings only). Once you’ve earned 250 points you can exchange them for miles or shopping vouchers.  If you’re not a member of the scheme yet, you can find out how Heathrow Rewards works in this article.

Emirates Skywards joined Heathrow Rewards as a ‘transfer out’ partner back in May 2015 – see here.   As British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa were already transfer partners, it was not a surprising addition.  The transfer rate is the same as the other airline partners.  250 Heathrow Rewards points gets you 250 miles.

What IS different is that you are also allowed to transfer Emirates Skywards miles INTO Heathrow Rewards points.  The details are here.

Here are the transfer rules when no bonus is running:

The minimum Emirates transfer into Heathrow Rewards is 6,000 miles

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

Conversions must be made in multiples of 6,000 Skywards miles

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

As 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points gets you a £20 shopping or Heathrow Express voucher, you are usually getting 0.33p per Skywards mile

Alternatively, 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points gets you a £40 Official Heathrow Parking voucher, so you are usually getting 0.66p per Skywards mile

You CANNOT convert Heathrow Rewards points gained via Emirates into airline miles

The final point above is very important.  The ONLY things you can do with Heathrow Rewards points generated from an Emirates Skywards conversion are:

redeem for a Heathrow shopping voucher

redeem for Heathrow Express vouchers

redeem for discounts on pre-booked Official Heathrow Parking 

I tried this out when the feature was first launched.  I moved 6,000 Emirates Skywards miles across.  The transfer was INSTANT.  I logged out of my Heathrow Rewards account, logged back in and the 2,000 points were there.

Next to your points total online is a little question mark.  Click on this and a box pops up which says:

Heathrow points:  xxx

Emirates converted points: xxx

I went over to the Avios conversion page.  I got a message “You do not have enough points to redeem for this reward”, which was true if you excluded the Emirates miles.  I then went to the shopping vouchers page and WAS able to redeem for £20 of shopping vouchers without any problems.

With a 50% bonus, you will receive a £30 Heathrow shopping voucher or Heathrow Express voucher for every 6,000 Skywards miles you convert.

In most cases, this is still not an outstanding deal.  It is pointless (sic) converting American Express Membership Rewards points to Emirates Skywards to Heathrow Rewards just to get 0.5p per mile – there are plenty of Amex redemptions which offer better value than that.

However, this IS an excellent way of using up some spare Emirates Skywards miles (minimum 6,000) which you don’t imagine yourself using in any other way.

If you pay for Official Heathrow Parking this deal DOES offer good value.  Heathrow Rewards offers you ‘double value’ when you redeem for Official Heathrow Parking – for example, 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points gets you a £40 parking voucher.

If you convert your Emirates miles and redeem them for Official Heathrow Parking credit, you are getting 1p per Emirates Skywards mile or, if you convert from Amex Membership Rewards to Emirates Skywards to Heathrow Rewards, 1p per American Express Membership Rewards point.  This is very good.

Don’t forget the other two ways of using up small amounts of Emirates Skywards miles though – Arsenal football tickets and redeeming for easyJet flights.

Remember that you CANNOT use this as a method of converting Skywards miles into Avios by laundering them through Heathrow Rewards.

The 50% bonus offer runs until 6th November and you can find full details on the Emirates website here.

How to earn Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards (December 2021)

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.  These are:

• 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 two free airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 30,000 Emirates Skywards miles

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 5,000 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.