Originally Posted by
whimike
It certainly seems to be odd behavior with Emirates. On my DXB -> SFO flight it appears that EK did send out upgrade emails. But, I never received one and I am Gold (which is likely the reason I wouldn't have received one). The flight ended up having about 8 seats empty in Y and thus there were no op-ups (even though KVS showed Y0 for the past several days).
I find it strange that EK would enable non-status flyers to upgrade for $750'ish, and not allow status flyers the same opportunity. My only choice would have been to pay the fare difference ($3500'ish) or use 67,500 miles to upgrade the leg.
I understand the hypothesis that EK wants Gold members to buy F and J fares, but it just smacks of a complete lack of valuing their elites when they offer non-status blues a far better upgrade path than elites.
You make a very good point. I suppose the challenge is how or where do they draw the line in terms of the upgrade path for elites? For example, if you are a Gold and continue to buy Flex Y fares, should you receive upgrade email offers all the time?
This is only my 4th year flying EK and I have received multiple email offers - but more when I was Blue and Silver than Gold. There didn't appear to be any method to when they were sent out. The last one I received I declined because I was confident that I would be op-upped if it was oversold in Y (which it was).
If you crawl over the EK forum a little more, you'll see a bunch of us who even question the "value" of being Gold (especially if you are flying paid J). There's certainly no visible incentive to continue to fly EK once you have reached 50,000 tier miles.
I state the following not to boast nor to prove anything, but I earned 300,000 tier miles last year and will probably do closer to 500,000 tier miles this year - for that, I'd like to see some additional benefits (such as lounge access in outstations, preference when it came to email upgrade offers etc). Obviously I'm continuing to fly EK despite their loyalty program, because the cost and schedule suit me at present.