My experience has been that unless you rate it, regardless of your bank, you can't get it. Discounted first class only on a 8 hour leg - I'm guessing we get no discounts on EK (we never used to). So you get full price business - even if you has the bank they would not allow you to use it to buy a FC ticket - at least with Global.
Is AF first any good? Their business used to suck.