Book this before it's too late

Good morning from Indonesia, where, as of yesterday, I am now officially a fully-fledged resident. 🇮🇩

But before I hit the town to celebrate, let’s finish off the week with one last newsletter:

• 😬 Book your Emirates flights NOW

• ✈️ Fast-track to AA elite status

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

😬 Book your Emirates flights NOW

Some weird stuff is going on with Emirates, and it’s not fun…

For starters, Citi just lowered its transfer ratio to Emirates Skywards. In the past, like most programs, it was a simple 1:1 ratio.

But a couple of days ago, it announced that the new ratio for transfers from ThankYou points to Emirates will be 5:4 beginning July 27 of this year.

That’s pretty tragic… very few programs have any transfer partners that are less than 1:1, especially with airlines.

The good news is that other programs like Membership Rewards points and Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Emirates at a 1:1 ratio, so we have an alternative…

…right?

WRONG. ☠️

A few days ago, we saw some weird pop-ups like this starting to appear on the transfer pages for those two points programs. 👇

To be clear, here is what each program is saying:

• Membership Rewards points transfers to Emirates will be “temporarily” unavailable starting May 28, with no end date.

• Ultimate Rewards points transfers to Emirates will be unavailable starting May 29, but “tentatively” come back on June 30.

So yeah…. Very scary.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but here’s what I DO know:

Book those Emirates flights now while you can still transfer points — especially if you have summer and fall travel plans that Emirates could help you with.

For example, you can fly between New York (JFK) and Milan (MXP) for just 17,500 Emirates miles in economy, which is a fantastic deal:

Business class on these fifth-freedom routes can be harder to find availability for, but it’ll run you 87,000 miles each way, which is also not bad considering it’s one of the world’s best airlines.

Emirates has some other unique sweet spots like this Fifth-freedom route between Malta (MLA) and Cyprus (LCA) for just 7,500 miles in economy:

Anyway, Emirates has a pretty solid program and is one of the world’s best airlines.

It’s a little scary to see that points transfers will be disappearing indefinitely. It may be down for a month, but we just don’t know.

So now is the best time to look into flights for later this year and see if you can leverage Emirates’ program before it’s too late.

✈️ Fast-track AA elite status

American Airlines is out with a VERY enticing offer for some lucky ducklings that will allow you to reach meaningful elite status quickly and easily.

Here’s the deal:

If you check your “offers” page in your AA account, you might see a targeted offer to earn elite status this year and then receive a gift.

Here’s how the above offer works:

If you earn 40,000 Loyalty Points before February 28th, 2026, you’ll get to choose between the following two gifts:

• 35,000 bonus Loyalty Points (which will put you at Platinum status), or

• Gift AA Gold status to a friend

As you can imagine, this is a pretty solid deal.

Basically, if you earn Gold status normally (which requires 40,000 Loyalty Points), you’ll have the option to boost to Platinum status, which comes with meaningful benefits:

But the real benefit of Platinum status is Oneworld Sapphire status.

If you fly on any of the many Oneworld airlines around the world, you’ll get elite benefits, including access to business-class lounges.

But there are also other versions of this offer floating around.

For example, there is an offer with the same structure but for Platinum and Platinum Pro status, which could also be valuable (though much harder to earn).

Anyway, go check your accounts to see if you’ve been targeted. If you have, you need to register by May 23.

Don’t forget that there are many ways to earn Loyalty Points beyond just flying on a plane, so completing these requirements could be much easier than you think.

Want to help Daily Drop take over the world? Share our newsletter with your friends/family/pets/colleagues/enemies and win some rewards in the process!

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving the Daily Drop Travel Toolkit.

Or copy your unique referral URL to share with others: https://newsletter.dailydrop.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

…or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. 😉

I hope you enjoyed today’s short and sweet newsletter. I’m not happy about the Emirates situation, but I’m glad we still have a month to ponder some potential transfers.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you Monday for some fun travel tips.

6.1944° S, 106.8229° E