Bits: update on Emirates First redemptions, first Lufthansa Amex cashback deal

News in brief:

Emirates First Class redemptions are not totally dead!

On Saturday we ran an article on the decision by Emirates to block anyone without elite status (Silver or above) in Emirates Skywards from booking First Class redemptions.

This was clearly a move to hold back First Class capacity for actual Emirates flyers rather than people transferring credit card points.

Emirates gave less than 48 hours notice of the decision, which was poor. It is probably not a coincidence that, during this short period, you couldn’t transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Emirates due to ‘system maintenance’.

The new policy is now live. It turns out that there are two bits of good news:

• it is still possible for a no-status member of Skywards to upgrade a cash Business Class ticket to First Class using Skywards miles

• Qantas Frequent Flyer members can still redeem for Emirates First Class rewards via the Qantas scheme

Qantas Frequent Flyer is a UK American Express Membership Rewards partner so redeeming for Emirates First Class with Qantas Points is an option. This guide from Australian site Flight Hacks explains how it is done.

It seems that a one-way First Class flight from Heathrow to Dubai should be 85,500 Qantas Points, looking at the award chart here, although it price at 89,800 for some reason. This will increase to 102,600 Qantas Points for bookings made after 5th August 2025. Taxes and charges are around £550 from London, one way.

It is important to note that Emirates does not release a lot of First Class availability in advance. It is easy to find within 14 days of departure but you won’t have a lot of options if you want to book six months in advance.

Lufthansa launches its first ever American Express cashback deal

Here’s a surprise. Lufthansa has decided to follow its fellow Star Alliance member United Airlines and launch a cashback offer with American Express.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time that Lufthansa has run one.

Unfortunately, it’s not a knockout deal due to the high minimum spend and short booking period.

If you are targeted for this deal (and no-one in my family was) you will receive £300 cashback when you spend £2,500 on the Lufthansa website by 30th May 2025.

Spend can be cumulative.

Historically a lot of HfP readers, including myself, have benefitted from aggressive Lufthansa long-haul sale deals from the UK. We haven’t seen one of these for a while now.

The small print is a bit of a mess. It doesn’t specifically say that flights must depart from the UK, but if you try to book one that doesn’t I suspect it may be ticketed locally and won’t trigger the cashback.

More importantly, it doesn’t specifically say which airlines you can book. The phrase ‘Lufthansa Airlines’ could mean multiple things. Just Lufthansa? Just Lufthansa Group airlines (Lufhansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels)?

I suspect that anything bookable via the Lufthansa website here will be OK but there is some risk if not booking on Lufthansa itself.

Thanks to Alex for his help with this.