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.....

 

[lovestotravel]

Was planning to use my 650k plus QF points on EK. Let's see if there's anything left in March/April 2026.

March is drying up fast, of course way way more availability booking with EK directly

To me is seems EK has limited the number of seats available to QF, which seemed to start about a month ago

 

[aikman]

I didn't think EK F was that popular because of the high taxes. Is the sudden interest only because of the scarcity factor or has there been a large but quiet group of QFFers booking EK F all this time?

 

[am0985]

I didn't think EK F was that popular because of the high taxes. Is the sudden interest only because of the scarcity factor or has there been a large but quiet group of QFFers booking EK F all this time?

EK F is still worth it even with the high carrier charges. You can literally eat and drink the lions share of those back on a typical trip.

It's EK J which is no longer worth it. The charges are the same as F.

 

[levelnine]

QFF has hardly ever set the world on fire with redemptions, so why would US churners start now? Not sure what kind of redemptions are good to/from the US with QFF points, let alone those that a credit card churn (single one) can access.

Also, as I surmised before, you only need EK status to access EK F redemptions, and it's quite easy to get EK Silver straight away via a seemingly cheap credit card (even Emirates seems to suggest this so). So this is kind of a non-event in a way, especially for churners that EK would seemingly want to stop.

People in the US avoid getting useless personal credit cards because they add to their 5/24 status (which locks them out of Chase cards).

Far easier to transfer the millions of points they will have from Amex/Citi/CapitalOne to Qantas and redeem that way.

I've already seen an uptick in the number of brokers wanting to buy Qantas points in the last day or two.

 

[elanshin]

I didn't think EK F was that popular because of the high taxes. Is the sudden interest only because of the scarcity factor or has there been a large but quiet group of QFFers booking EK F all this time?

Given the taxes are generally the same for J and F, its "more value" to go for F. Also as a whole EK F is one of those bucket list items for a lot of people with the decor on board, the shower etc.