I am gold with them for the past 6 years and do the BOM-DXB-JFK route in Y quite often with them. Earlier, I used to get upgraded to J on at least 1 leg of my onward and return journey if not more. My upgrade success in the BOM-DXB was however very poor which I shall come to in a little while.

However, I didn't get upgraded on my trip last december which made me feel a bit frustrated a bit and so I made it a point to find out the reason why I had suddenly lost favor with Emirates. I have made two trips to NY this year and didn't get a single upgrade. After I did some looking around and sneaking a peek on the flight rosters, the reason became fairly clear. The flights were just not full - and so no complementary upgrades. On my onward this time to JFK, a couple tried to argue with the gate agent that they were gold and could she get an upgrade to which the agent retorted back immediately that the flight wasn't full in Yand so there were no complementary upgrades given in Y to J.

I believe that the reason why EK flights from BOM aren't going full is due to two main reasons (apart from the fact we still aren't out of the recession fully):

1. There are now 5 daily flights BOM-DXB by EK and demand is just not up to capacity.

2. There is increased competition on the BOM-DXB, BOM-LHR, and BOM-JFK from Jet and Kingfisher and they are weaning away a lot of flyers from EK possibly due to their better fares and of course service.

So unless EK does something that can really help their cause, comp ups aren't going to be coming easy. I really hope that EK can get their act together soon which would be really good for them (and me )

BTW, I have always wondered why I rarely got upgraded on the BOM-DXB leg even though the flights were full and the conclusion that I have reached is that there are some folks who seem to have good personal contacts with the ground staff who manage to get upgraded and the other folks like me have to put up a smile and walk straight into Y. Anyone else have a similar experience?