Originally Posted by
Hyperacusis
That seems to be the consensus here. Trust EK to be incredibly inflexible. I am quite used to accessing F lounges on BA and AA when connecting through LHR, arriving in F and departing in J. Within the US as well. This was of course before I earned EXP status, which provides me F lounge access regardless. One would think EK might be more flexible with regard to this, particularly given how crowded the T3 J lounge is. There is a world of a difference between the J and F lounges, just in terms of how crowded they are, if nothing else.
However, what you're suggesting will only make the lounges even more crowded. For example, when I upgrade one segment of a flight, that doesn't entitle me to the T3 lounge at DXB. I instead would need to use the T1 lounge.
With EK, lounge access is offered prior to the flight based on the class of service. So it doesn't matter whether you were arriving in F, as it is a departure lounge, not an arrivals lounge. Of course, if they offered a separate F lounge at IAH, you'd be getting a better lounge there.