Can You Get Low Tax Reward Flights To New York?

Do you fly to New York using Avios or Virgin Points? Fed up of paying in the region of £700 worth of taxes & fees in addition to your points? In this post, we want to look at a new option through Emirates you have for low tax reward flights to New York.

Get Low Tax Reward Flights To New York With Emirates?

Yes! Emirates (despite not being a part of a major alliance) has loads of partner airlines that you can redeem on, of particular interest to us in this post is JetBlue. Historically with JetBlue you could only redeem for economy seats (more recently business class too) but not on their new routes to/from London. The good news? This restriction is no more! You can now use points for flights on JetBlue from London Heathrow and Gatwick to New York and, from Summer 2022, Boston too!

How much does it cost?

JetBlue ‘Mint’ business class from London to New York or Boston will set you back 128,000 Emirates miles plus £216.

Compare this to BA where a return flight will cost you 120,000 Avios + £688.90 peak or 100,000 Avios + £688.90 off-peak. If you value an Avios/Emirates miles at 1p you’d be saving £392.90 on the peak journey and £192.90 on the off-peak one.

It’s a similar situation with Virgin where a return flight will cost you 105,000 Virgin Points + £687 peak or 95,000 Virgin Points + £687 off-peak. If you value a Virgin Point/Emirates mile at 1p you’d be saving £242.90 on the peak journey and £142.90 on the off-peak one.

The one time using Avios & British Airways will make sense is if you are a couple/pair and have a 2-4-1 Voucher from a BA American Express card. This would mean you only need to pay one lot of Avios (you still need to pay 2 lots of taxes & fees.)

How Can I Book My Low Tax Reward Flights To New York?

You can book JetBlue flights through the Emirates website (if you don’t already have an account you’ll need to create one before doing this.) Click where it says Advanced search: multi-city, promo codes, partner airlines.

Once the next page loads select Book Classic Rewards Flight and then Search partner flights only. Click Return and then enter your route/dates/passenger numbers.

You can then select which flights you want, as you can see they are operated by JetBlue, and whilst the outgoing taxes are £253.66 the return are ridiculously cheap at £7.40!

What Is JetBlue’s Business Class Like?

Unfortunately as of yet we haven’t managed to fly on it but you read about JetBlue’s Mint seat here – https://www.jetblue.com/flying-with-us/mint. Feedback online appears to be mainly positive with many preferencing it over traditional long-haul carriers business class between UK – US.

Conclusion

If you use your membership reward points for flights to New York/Boston you now have a better value option for your points/wallet by converting into Emirates miles and flying on JetBlue. From reviews online it seems a pretty solid product too… Are you tempted to use your membership reward points for low tax reward flights with JetBlue?