Emirates Restricts First Class Awards Only To Skywards Elite Members From May 12, 2025

Emirates is rolling out an “enhancement” to its Skywards frequent flier program. The program will now only offer First Class awards to its elite members.

You cannot book First Class awards using Skywards miles unless you are a Silver, Gold, or Platinum member as of May 12, 2025.

You can access Emirates here.

A LoyaltyLobby reader alerted us to a notice shown on your Skywards account.

You can still pull up First Class awards using the search, but only until Monday.

The page references Skywards’ elite benefits matrix, but there is no information that these First Class awards will be a tier benefit starting this Monday (May 12, 2025).

Conclusion

It is not uncommon for airlines to have “enhanced” availability for their elite members when it comes to various awards. I believe Air France was the first airline to make its First Class awards available only to its top-tier members (unless you are a Flying Blue Platinum, you don’t have access to them).

Emirates has a first-class cabin in most of its flights, and it is pretty popular, regardless of the number of miles required and surcharges, among miles collectors who now lose access unless they are also Skywards Silver or higher members.

I feel that Emirates should have disclosed this to program members rather than posting a small notice on its website and hiding the information from its elite benefits matrix.

Source