How to Book Emirates First Class with Points and Miles

Emirates first class is a bucket-list item for many travelers seeking luxury flights with points and miles. The aspirational product features onboard showers, onboard bars, luxurious suites, attentive service and extravagant food and beverages. The ground experience, particularly at the airline’s home airport of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (DXB), also is impressive and may include chauffeur transfers and exclusive lounges.

Emirates first class varies depending on the plane. The older product, which is on all Airbus A380 planes, has unique features, such as onboard showers and bars, but the suites themselves aren’t fully enclosed with floor-to-ceiling partitions. The newer first class is available on a limited number of Boeing 777-300ER aircraft and features floor-to-ceiling enclosed suites. One Mile at a Time discussed how to identify routes featuring the new first class. The newer product also has three suites per row vs. four suites per row in the older product.

It’s usually extremely expensive to purchase Emirates long-haul first-class tickets with cash. Some one-way flights from the United States to Dubai exceed $15,000.

Given high cash rates, booking Emirates first class with points and miles is a coveted award option for some travelers, even though it requires a lot of points. Former “sweet spots”—specific programs and options that enable booking Emirates first class at low award rates—no longer exist. Award rates for one-way long-haul Emirates first-class flights typically fall between 100,000 and 250,000 points or miles plus taxes. Whether Emirates first class is worthwhile at current award rates is a personal decision.

Before delving into current award options, let’s review some basics about Emirates.

Emirates first-class awards are available through Emirates Skywards and certain other airline loyalty programs. Although the Dubai-based carrier isn’t a member of any airline alliance, Emirates has partnerships with several other airlines, and some partnerships allow travelers to book Emirates flights through other airlines’ loyalty programs. Current partners that can be used to book Emirates first-class awards include Air Canada Aeroplan and Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Emirates First-Class Routes

For travelers based in the United States, the most relevant Emirates routes are nonstop flights between several U.S. airports and Dubai as well as three nonstop fifth-freedom flights that Emirates operates between the U.S. and other countries without traveling through Dubai. From Dubai, Emirates offers connecting flights to numerous destinations in Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Nonstop Emirates flights to and from the U.S. include the following routes:

• Dubai (DXB) and Boston (BOS); New York (JFK); Washington (IAD); Orlando, Florida (MCO); Miami (MIA); Chicago (ORD); Dallas (DFW); Seattle (SEA); San Francisco (SFO); and Los Angeles (LAX)
• Newark, New Jersey (EWR); and Athens, Greece (ATH)
• New York (JFK) and Milan (MXP)
• Miami (MIA) and Bogota, Colombia (BOG)

As detailed below, the fifth-freedom flights between the U.S. and Europe or Colombia are interesting options because these routes have lower award rates and avoid high taxes and fees associated with flights that originate in, end at or transit through Dubai.

Finding Emirates First-Class Awards

The best search approach depends on the type of points and miles you want to use, whether you have Emirates elite status and your level of flexibility in terms of travel dates and route.

Many points and miles enthusiasts have flexible currency that can be transferred to foreign airline programs and then be used to book Emirates awards. The table below summarizes which flexible currency programs support transfers to programs that can be used for Emirates first class.

If you want to fly a specific route and have a narrow date range, searching each relevant program individually is easiest. More award space may be available through Skywards compared to partner programs.

On the other hand, if you’re open to a broader range of dates or routes, a third-party search tool may make it easier to find potential award availability. Seats.aero is useful for searching multiple routes over a longer period of time quickly. The free version identifies availability for 60 days from the search date, and the paid (Pro) version covers a one-year window. The Pro version also has more options for filtering results.

To identify Emirates flights between U.S. airports and Dubai (DXB) that might be available using Skywards points, Seats.aero search parameters include choosing “Emirates Skywards” from the “Explore” dropdown and selecting “North America” and “Asia” as the from and to choices. The tool considers Dubai to be in Asia. 

After results are displayed, click the arrow in the “First” column to sort by first-class availability. Options displayed with green shading are direct flights, while blue shading indicates connecting flights. Given the airport pairs and the award rates displayed, all the examples below are Emirates nonstop flights. For our search, Toronto (YYZ) showed more award availability than any eastern U.S. airports.

Partial results for a sample search are shown below.

One caveat when using Seats.aero is that the options shown aren’t real-time results, so awards displayed may no longer be available. It’s always important to verify award availability through Emirates Skywards (or other booking program) before transferring points.

Seats.Aero can also be used to search for awards bookable through Qantas Frequent Flyer. In this case, select “Qantas Frequent Flyer” instead of “Emirates Skywards” in the “Explore” dropdown.

Booking with Emirates Skywards

Beginning May 12, 2025, Emirates restricted the ability to book first-class awards through the Skywards program. These awards are now available only to Emirates Silver, Gold and Platinum tier members. The miles calculator page displayed the following message on May 12.

If you don’t already have required Skywards elite status, there are still a few options to secure Emirates first-class awards.

• Obtain one of the Barclays co-branded credit cards that provide Emirates status: The Emirates Skywards Rewards World Elite Mastercard® provides automatic Silver tier membership for the first cardmember year, and the Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard® provides automatic Gold tier membership for the same period. Both cards offer the opportunity to retain status beyond the first year by meeting minimum spending requirements. After the first year, the Premium card provides Silver status without meeting spending thresholds.
• Use Skywards miles to book business class and upgrade to first class: This option is discussed below.
• Book through a partner program: Emirates didn’t add new restrictions on partner awards at the time it added the elite status requirement for booking through Skywards. Details about booking via partner programs are discussed below.

Emirates Skywards is a transfer partner with several flexible currency programs, including American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy.

While multiple transfer partners make it easy to obtain Emirates miles, recent developments make it more difficult or less valuable to transfer points to Emirates.

• Citi ThankYou Rewards is reducing its transfer ratio to Emirates from 1:1 to 5:4 on July 27, 2025. Once the new transfer ratio is implemented, 1,000 ThankYou Points will yield 800 Emirates miles for every 1,000 points transferred.
• From late May into June 2025, transfers from all flexible currency programs to Emirates were suspended. 

The reason for temporarily suspending transfers appears to be related to Emirates implementing backend system changes. Transfers from all programs seem to be working again as of June 19, 2025.

With temporary suspension of transfers to Emirates being announced shortly after the reduced Citi ThankYou Points transfer ratio was revealed, there was speculation that these events might be related, and that there might be more negative changes on the horizon. Industry observers raised logical questions about whether we might see other transfer ratios being reduced and/or some programs ending transfers to Emirates.

The change with Citi transfer ratios—in conjunction with past massive increases in Emirates award rates through Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan (before the Alaska and Emirates partnership ended) and Air Canada Aeroplan—supports industry speculation that Emirates is driving changes by demanding more compensation from partners and making it less attractive for partner program members to redeem points for Emirates flights.

Emirates Skywards award examples displayed below reflect availability for a base level (Blue) Skywards member before first-class redemption restrictions were implemented on May 12.

Emirates has two types of awards. The less expensive Saver awards are limited to round-trip awards, with discounted rates for economy, premium economy and business fares. Flex Plus award rates apply to one-way awards and first-class redemptions. Flex Plus awards allow free changes and cancellation before travel, but Saver awards have fees.

It’s possible to book a round-trip award in first class on the outbound flight and in business class on the return flight (or vice versa). Furthermore, if booking a round-trip ticket, you can save miles by choosing the Saver award instead of the Flex Plus award for the business-class flight. 

Here’s an example using mixed service classes and mixed award types for a round-trip itinerary between New York and Milan for 156,000 miles.

Flying in first class in both directions requires 204,000 miles and $244.91 in taxes and fees.

Emirates doesn’t publish an award chart, but the Skywards program has fixed redemption rates. The miles calculator can be used to determine award rates. Inputs include the type of ticket (one-way or return), origin, destination and class of service. To see the taxes and fees, you have to search for specific flights. 

One-way award rates for nonstop first-class Emirates flights are:

• 60,000 miles between Miami and Bogota
• 102,000 miles between the U.S. and Milan or Athens
• 163,500 miles between eastern U.S. airports (including Chicago) and Dubai
• 186,000 miles between western U.S. airports (including Dallas and Houston) and Dubai

Emirates imposes significant fuel surcharges on flights with Dubai as the origin, connecting city or destination. For example, a one-way first-class award from Boston (BOS) to Dubai (DXB) costs 163,500 miles and almost $840 in taxes and fees for one-way travel.

Emirates Flex Plus awards on the two routes from the U.S. to Europe require 102,000 miles in first class or 87,000 miles in business class. Taxes and fees are the same for business- and first-class awards. One-way taxes and fees range from about $100 to $150 on both routes and are slightly higher from Europe to the U.S. compared to the other direction.

First-class awards between Miami and Bogota are 60,000 miles one way with fees of about $106 from Miami and $190 from Bogota. This 3.5-hour flight won’t provide the same experience compared to much longer flights between the U.S. and Dubai or even the U.S. and Europe, but it may appeal to some travelers due to the lower award rates and usually good availability.

If first-class awards aren’t an option when booking—either due to limited award availability or not having elite status—it’s possible to book business class and upgrade to first class later using additional miles if seats are available. This upgrade opportunity applies when booking through the Skywards program only. Emirates frequently asked questions provide the following details:

Booking with Air Canada Aeroplan

Air Canada Aeroplan allows flexible currency transfers from the same programs as Emirates with one notable exception. Citi ThankYou Points can’t be transferred to Aeroplan.

For many years, Aeroplan has been considered one of the best programs for booking partner awards at good rates, but this is no longer true for Emirates flights. A couple of years ago, Aeroplan introduced a separate award chart for Emirates flights, and the new award rates were much higher.

In late March 2025, Aeroplan introduced dynamic pricing on selected partner airlines, including United Airlines, and rolled Air Canada and Emirates flights into the same dynamic pricing structure. Aeroplan still publishes distance and region-based award charts, but these charts only provide “starting at” rates for “Air Canada and/or select partners” including Emirates. With dynamic award rates, you have to search through Aeroplan to determine rates for a specific flight, and many of these dynamic rates are many times higher than the published starting rate.

We checked Aeroplan for the same nonstop 6,663-mile flight from Boston to Dubai with Emirates first-class award availability for 163,500 Skywards miles. Aeroplan’s “Between North America and Atlantic zones” award chart showed the starting first-class award rate for this distance flight to be 130,000 Aeroplan points. The actual rate for the specific flight was 672,000 Aeroplan points.

Other searches performed and other reports about Aeroplan’s new pricing for Emirates flights support the conclusion that Aeroplan typically provides extremely poor value for booking Emirates awards. The lowest award rate we observed for Emirates first-class flights to Dubai was 426,800 Aeroplan points from Toronto, and a sample of U.S. to Dubai routes showed rates of 672,000 points to 768,500 points.

It might be worth checking Aeroplan for a unicorn good redemption on Emirates flights, but most of the time, Emirates Skywards or Qantas Frequent Flyer are likely to offer significantly better rates.

Keep in mind that Aeroplan has much lower taxes and fees for Emirates awards compared to redeeming points through Emirates or Qantas programs, but award rates differences among programs would have to be much closer for lower taxes and fees to be relevant for most travelers.

Aeroplan charges a partner booking fee, and some award rates have cancellation and change fees. Aeroplan’s more expensive “flexible reward” rates don’t have cancellation and change fees, but the “lowest reward” rates do have cancellation and change fees. There was a 17,000-point difference in lowest and flexible reward rates for first-class awards we saw from North America to Dubai.

Booking with Qantas Frequent Flyer

Qantas has fewer U.S.-based flexible currency transfer partners compared to Emirates and Air Canada. Programs that currently allow transfers to Qantas Frequent Flyer are American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards.

Qantas announced upcoming program changes that impact award rates for bookings made beginning Aug. 5, 2025. Current and new distance-based award tables are available, and this change is expected to decrease award rates for flights in Emirates economy and increase award rates for Emirates business and first. Emirates also falls under different award tables before and after these program changes.

• Before Aug. 5, the Partner Classic Flight Rewards table applies to flights operated by Emirates.
• Beginning Aug. 5, the Qantas Classic Flight Rewards table applies to flights operated by Emirates, Qantas and selected other partner airlines.

Since Qantas awards are based on flight distance, we validated that sample Emirates first-class awards match current rates in the Partner Classic Flight Rewards chart.

The Boston to Dubai flight has a total estimated distance of 6,663 miles and falls into Zone 7 for one-way distances of 5,801 to 7,000 miles. The award rate of 149,800 Qantas points is the expected rate for first-class flights within that distance band, and this rate is lower than the Emirates Skywards rate for the same flight.

Observed first-class award rates for the 1,507-mile Miami to Bogota flight correspond with published rates for Zone 3 (1,201 to 2,400 miles) at 64,500 Qantas points. For this route, Qantas award rates are higher than Emirates.

The table below summarizes rates for Emirates nonstop routes to and from the United States for current award rates and new award rates for bookings made on or after Aug. 5.

Some observations about Qantas award rates are:

• New Qantas first-class award rates are about 14% higher than old rates on the routes above, except between Miami and Bogota.
• All flight distance estimates are from Great Circle Mapper. 
• U.S. to Dubai nonstop routes—except between Boston or New York and Dubai —fall into the same Qantas distance zone.

Qantas awards have change and cancellation fees that are charged in Qantas points, not cash. The fee to cancel an award ticket is 6,000 points, and the change fee is 5,000 points.

Comparing Emirates and Qantas Awards

Since Air Canada Aeroplan rates are variable and typically much higher, Emirates Skywards and Qantas Frequent Flyer are the two programs that travelers are most likely to use to book Emirates first class. Factors that determine which program(s) are viable include award availability, Emirates status level, and the type(s) of flexible currency and/or program-specific currency available.

If it’s possible to book a desired award through either program, additional factors to consider are the award rate and program policies and fees. Award taxes and fees on the routes we checked are similar through Emirates and Qantas programs. Emirates doesn’t charge fees for canceling or changing first-class awards, while Qantas has fees.

The program with the lower award rate depends on specific routes. For the U.S. nonstop routes discussed, we found that:

• For bookings made before Aug. 5, Qantas Frequent Flyer has lower rates for flights between Dubai and Boston, New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles, while Emirates Skywards has lower award rates on other U.S. nonstop flights.
• For bookings made after Qantas award rates increase, Emirates Skywards has lower rates on all routes.

If you’re interested in routes other than nonstop U.S. routes and/or travel in a different class of service, the following steps can be used to determine which program has better rates:

• Use Emirates’ miles calculator to determine the award rate using Skywards miles.
• Check the total flight distance (the sum of the distance for individual segments for connecting routes).
• Use the relevant Qantas award chart to determine the award rate for the flight distance and class of service.

Let’s consider an example flight from Boston (BOS) to Hong Kong (HKG) with a connection in Dubai (DXB).

• The Emirates miles calculator shows that the first-class award rate is 178,750 Skywards miles.
• The total flight distance is 10,347 miles.
• The total flight distance corresponds with Qantas Zone 10 rates for 9,601 to 15,000 miles, and Qantas award rates are higher than Emirates rates.
  • For flights booked before Aug. 5, the Qantas first-class award rate from the Partner Classic Flight Reward table is 227,500 points. 
  • For flights booked beginning Aug. 5, the Qantas Classic Flight Reward table applies, and the Zone 10 rate is 249,400 points for first class.

Most long connecting routes from the U.S. to Southeast Asia and further destinations in Africa (such as Cape Town, South Africa) via Dubai have similar results with Emirates award rates being lower than Qantas Zone 10 rates. 

For example, Los Angeles (LAX) to Dubai (DXB) to Singapore (SIN) covers a total distance of 11,971 miles, and Emirates award rate is 197,500 Skywards miles.

The situation reverses for some of the longest routes, such as Los Angeles (LAX) to Dubai (DXB) to Perth, Australia (PER). In this case, the total flight distance is 13,948 miles. The Emirates miles calculator shows a rate of 262,250 Skywards miles for first class. Qantas award rates would be lower at the Zone 10 rates (before and after program changes).

Final Thoughts

Emirates first class can be booked using points and miles through Air Canada Aeroplan, Emirates Skywards and Qantas Frequent Flyer programs. In most cases, Aeroplan rates are excessive, so travelers generally should use Emirates or Qantas programs to book Emirates first class. Restrictions added in May 2025 prevent Emirates Skywards members without elite status from booking first-class awards through Skywards, although there are workarounds.

Emirates and Qantas programs have fixed award rates for specific routes, but the programs use different approaches to calculate rates. Emirates has a calculator that shows the award rate for selected origin and destination pairs, while Qantas rates are based on total flight distance, with 10 distance bands determining the award rate.

Routes and booking date determine which program’s rates are lower:

• With award rates in effect as of May 2025, some nonstop U.S. first-class routes have lower award rates through Emirates Skywards, and other routes have lower rates through Qantas Frequent Flyer. 
• For bookings made on or after Aug. 5, first-class awards on all Emirates nonstop flights to or from the U.S. have lower rates if booked through Emirates than Qantas.
• After Qantas award rates change, most first-class awards for routes connecting in Dubai will require fewer miles to book through Emirates compared to Qantas. Exceptions are some of the longest routes, such as connecting routes between the U.S. and the South Pacific.

Despite relatively high award rates and taxes and fees for booking Emirates first class through Emirates and Qantas programs, the even higher cash rates make using points and miles a better option for many travelers who want to experience Emirates first class.

The post How to Book Emirates First Class with Points and Miles appeared first on MileValue.