Originally Posted by thijsseh

I guess there are different ways of interpreting this (although I agree it is a bit 'strange').

This is probably a route on which EK often sells 'walkup tickets'. So they don't make award upgrades available at all. Any airline would rather sell tickets at high prices (walkup is normally Flex+, I think but correct me if I'm wrong) than just taking a few miles off their balance sheet (and with EK's 3 year validity rule they'll disappear anyway). So although none of us 'mile rich wannabe upgraders' likes it, it needs to be looked at from a business perspective and unfortunately they are right as far as that is concerned.

What they have told DH is that if it comes to on-board space available upgrades he is first in the queue. Now isn't that nice of them...