I have found it difficult to buy an F ticket, let alone secure my preferred suite unless my departure date is at least a month away. Available seats in F are scarce or absent for flights up to a week away from current day.

EF shows a significant takeup of F seats on 409 out of Melbourne, and routinely departs with a full F cabin. In this scenario, It would be near impossible for anyone to get an upgrade to first. Equally, I notice business seats are almost as tight, so any upgrade from Y would also be extremely hard to get.

I can only speak for MEL-DXB flights, but I suspect it is a similar story across most Australian capital cities served by Emirates.

On 2 May, there will be an additional flight out of Melbourne (407), and 409 will return to its 5am departure slot. This flight may not suit many who wish to have a reasonably short transit in DXB before continuing to their final destination. It arrives at 1pm, when the large majority of connecting flights have departed by 11am. This means most travellers will need to stay overnight in Dubai before catching their morning flight out. Consequently, I expect most travellers will not fly on 409 and 407 will continue to be full with no upgrades available.

We need EK405 to return. I enjoyed the transit in Singapore.