Originally Posted by evilbrian

I got curious about this after the 15th July changes. I travel the MEL-AKL route every few weeks for business, usually in J, and have never had a problem getting an instantaneous miles upgrade since they put an A380 on that route...until July 15 of course.

I was well aware of the 'super-saver' rule change for miles upgrades, and don't have a problem with it. The old system of being able to buy an ultra-cheap super-saver ticket and then use my miles to upgrade to J was brilliant value while it lasted though. I assumed paying for an ordinary saver would give me the same upgrade capability I was used to, but it didn't. Serves me right for not checking on EF first. I phoned the EK office here in Melb but the staff were a bit evasive, and the web support staff in Dubai were even worse, beyond stating the rule changes had nothing to do with the EK/QF alliance, which most Aus Skywards members view as a win for QF FF, and a loss for us. In short, nobody at EK was willing to talk about how the new changes affected ordinary saver bookings, so I decided to do some sleuthing.

I created a spreadsheet for all inbound and outbound flights on the MEL-AKL sector from Sept 30 to Dec 31, and used EF to load it up with the values for the number of J seats available and the corresponding number of seats in the D bucket on each day. I then go back and recheck the values every 8-10 days (well, my PA does..lol). This is how I found that on both legs of this route there are always D bucket seats available (usually 5 of them) in the 14-15 days prior to departure. I say 14 or 15 because I'm not sure whether EK are releasing them based on the time in Melb or the time in Dubai. Beyond the 14-15 day mark I haven't managed to decipher the pattern yet. Some days have D bucket seats available (almost always 7 seats), while other days have none. There's no inbetween, and little correlation between the number of unsold J seats and those available from the D bucket. Beyond about 6 weeks, D bucket seats disappear altogether, but this result may be skewed by the Xmas break which comes into play around then.

I'll post again about this when I have another 2-3 weeks of data, and hopefully a better idea of what's going on now.