Originally Posted by Metanoia

Welcome to the EK Forum!

LAX-DXB, in my experience, has only one first class seat allocated to awards and if even one person books a revenue ticket, they remove that award seat from inventory.

European routes in August are going to be killer hard as well, I looked for availability this year and the month of August had no awards available for MXP in J or F, so if you see J (really, D) inventory I'd grab it!

I'd invest in a ExpertFlyer subscription if I were you, you can set alerts for award availability there and get texted/emailed when it appears. I'm hoping my LAX-DXB segment in a few days gets a buzz...