Originally Posted by
soloman1
I find that sometimes upgrades are immediately available even if booked a long way in advance, and sometimes they are not released as available until about 2 weeks before the flight. In this, as well as in pricing, they do not seem to reward you for booking well in advance. Often prices are cheaper, for example, 2 months before the flight as opposed to 10 months. If you are booking well in advance, and your dates are a bit flexible, and ring Emirates, they will often tell you if certain dates are currently" showing upgrades as available.
It has nothing to do with how long in advance you booked that flight, they keep writing that you should try closer to departure. In fact I did try to upgrade two business class flights to First Class even 1 hour before departure or even Economy to Business around 1 hour before departure, it still keeps saying "try again closer to departure" and out of a sudden the function has been deactivated online. Later there are enough Business or First-Class seats available I had to find out. (what a shame?)
I tried with 80000 Business Rewards Miles and with my Gold-Card Miles or my accompanying passengers silver card, it's the same thing. The crazy thing is that we just spent around USD 40,000 on flight tickets and not even one instant upgrade on any flight.