From now till 23 April 18, Emirates is running a sale to Australia and Europe (and Dubai actually, if you intend to go there). Sale fares include both economy and business class fares, starting from S$429:

Destinations	Economy return (S$)	Business return (S$)
Perth	429	2,039
Melbourne, Brisbane	559	–
London (Gatwick/Stansted)	899	–
Wellington	899	5,679
Johannesburg	1,169	5,179
New York (JFK)	1,429	6,499

Know your operating airline

For Australia-bound customers, Emirates only operate two flights daily using their own aircraft – one to Melbourne, and one to Brisbane. For all other Australia destinations, you will be travelling with Qantas and that includes Perth, Sydney, Adelaide. Even for Wellington, your Australia-Wellington leg will be carried by Qantas.

If you check both their websites, you will see that for the same flights, you will be paying the same regardless of who you book through. This is due to a partnership between Emirates and Qantas signed five years ago that allows both airlines to better leverage each other’s networks in different parts of the world, as well as coordinate pricing in certain markets.

Are you a oneworld/Qantas Frequent Flyer?

So what does that mean for you? If you have a Qantas Frequent Flyer account, you might be better off booking through Qantas.com and earning some points and status credits on it. Since Qantas is part of oneworld, this also means that you get much better use of those points if you want to redeem flights within Asia.

Personally, what I love about the QF-EK partnership is really about being able to earn QF points on Emirates flights. While Emirates run a pretty solid programme, their refusal to join any major alliances, couple with their Dubai hub, means that the points you have with them are pretty much useless for intra-Asia flights redemption since they don’t do any of that.

WIth Qantas Frequent Flyer, not only you can redeem on oneworld partners, you can use them for Jetstar Asia flights too (but yeah I know, waste of points).

To earn Qantas points, you have to make sure you book on a QF code (e.g. QF8404 from SIN-MEL rather than EK404) and that’s easily done on Qantas.com.

In the meantime, there are many other fares available in the Emirates sale, so just check it out here.