Change of plans - for the better or worse?

A wise man once said that it's how you handle the unexpected that makes you great (or something like that). Found out yesterday that my Emirates A380 first class booked during the Global Sale was not only changed to a 773 but it was a plane without first class! Yikes! It looks like Emirates has also been swapping the A380 flights with 773 due to A380 shortages due to a "wing crack" issues.

Since it was an involuntary downgrade, Emirates allowed me to make changes without penalties. I changed my flights to coincide with a friend's wedding in Melbourne in May which I was originally using my BMI miles for. With this changes, I also had to cancel my Hilton stays in Auckland and Sydney since I'm not longer going there.

So, I'm now "stuck" with ~80K BMI miles and 3 free nights at Hilton which I don't have time to use. The worry with the BMI miles is that once the merger completes (which no one really knows when), the miles will not have the same value as it was once. There's even talk that Lufthansa might just stop operating BMI if the sale does not complete soon which would make my BMI miles completely useless.

I could probably use the free nights during my stay in Melbourne but I feel it's such as waste since Lydia isn't going and I'm not going to spend much time at the hotel anyway. I guess using them at Melbourne would be my back up plans.

Here's the hoping I made the right choice and my BMI miles will still be worth something for me to use in the future...