[rant]
Has anyone else encountered difficulties booking a reward ticket on EK through Skywards? I will after my next flight have enough for a reward ticket in Business from New Zealand (either AKL or CHC) to Central Europe (any of FRA, HAM, DUS, MUC, VIE, or ZRH). All of these are supposed to take 190,000 miles, but when I attempt to look for suitable dates for travel via the EK website, any of the combinations on any date (I have tried out until October), all flights appear as unavailable (although they are available when paying by cash).
I figured that this isn't such an issue, and was happy to also fly in Economy for my reward, until I tried to find suitable dates for a flight in economy (ostensibly requiring 95,000 miles) and ran into the same problem, there are no available seats on any flight. Zip. Nada. Nix. Zero. The only available flights at all are in "Peak Economy". The priviledge of "Peak Economy" appears to require 185,000 miles,
only 5,000 miles less than Business, and let me sit in the same Y class cabin as the 95,000 mile reward ticket.
Last time I checked the definition of Peak was for the period of maximum use, and in this case, the busiest period for the airline. According to what I have discovered, at least 7 months of the year are regarded as being "peak" (April to October inclusive), and the business class cabin is 100% full, and economy is so close to capacity I should
have to redeem 97% of the miles required for a seat in business to sit there. I thought the idea of a frequent flyer scheme was to reward FQTV for their loyalty to the airline by providing a free flight/upgrade once in a while. Obviously EK don't want their punters to redeem their rewards at all, and they con you into joining their scheme, they collect statistics on your travel habits, and then make it next to impossible to redeem any rewards, which are advertised as so easy to receive...
Yeah Right!
[/rant]