Emirates restricts first class awards to elite members only

[anat0l]

Given they've specifically mentioned that Skywards members in various countries can get Silver by opening Emirates credit cards, I'm guessing the aim is to drive sign ups.

That's a fair point. I don't know if the EK credit cards give signup bonuses, but I'm going to factor a guess that even a single churn won't yield a useful award (or even one in F, except maybe something like DXB-MCT). Of course, one could shove their spend into the card (which also helps retain the status), but at that point EK has achieved a goal.

As I referenced before, if you're lucky/savvy/rich/bold enough to hold multiple credit cards (e.g. in the US), you could signup for an EK card to at least unlock the status barrier then use any other card that sweeps to EK to earn the points.

If you're a low frequency flyer but you still spend a lot, you can maintain EK status based on annual spend on certain credit cards (or so I'm lead to believe), so they are not affected by this.....