Originally Posted by ung1

Hold on a second, can you actually convert UA/ CO miles to Skywards miles? I know you can redeem them for tickets on EK, but this is only possible for an award booking in F/J/Y and not for upgrades. Upgrades need to be done with Skywards miles.

Once you do get the required miles in a Skywards account, availability of upgrades is an issue. As an example, for late July this year, every flight DXB-LHR was unavailable, while Saver awards and upgrades were available in plenty on DXB-CDG A380. I'm not sure what the situation with DXB-SYD is. But don't count on easy availability of an upgrade, even if you have the miles.

If you want to get onto the EK A380 just for the experience, try doing SYD-AKL in F, I believe they have somewhat reasonable fares. I've only seen fares go up in the last few months, on practically every route I've looked at.