Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
I don't think EF knows your status (KVS does, obviously). I seem to recall that when rows are blocked for Silver and Golds this shows as Blocked in EF and thus it's clear what is going in, but UD was an exception - the status / paid seating was only visible via BA.com.
You can tell EF your FF number for the purposes of getting more accurate seat maps on BA, JL, QF and VA.
If you enter a Gold FF number, you will for example see 1A and 1K as available on a BA 744, whereas they will be blocked if there is a non-Gold number or no number. As far as I can see, EF doesn't check status itself. It sends the FF number along with the seat map request, and then displays whatever is returned. (For BA seat maps, it looks like a name is also required, and no seat map is returned unless the FF number matches the FF account name.)
Having done a quick test on EF, the Gold / non-Gold number seems to continue to work for First cabins and row 1 of CE. But on the 744s that I've looked at CW UD, no longer does what it used to - hence
FeedbirdNiner is seeing the status-only UD seats as available.
Noticing the thread title: I doubt that this has anything to do with FLY, as the flights concerned are so far into the future.