This has been discussed several times but I thought of starting a thread to share our experience with finding availability several weeks/months ahead of time.

I recently upgraded 2 passengers from X to I on the same flight in 3 months time (X being one way flex fare). I did each passenger separately.

Availability was showing I9 prior and remained I9 after the first upgrade was processed.
But when I completed the second transaction it became I0!

Something tells me they are restricting upgrades to 2 seats a flight. Could this possible? This is very similar to RJ.

Last week I upgraded my wife and me from economy to business on a 380 flight from SYD to DXB in October.
SeatCounter showed I class = 0
Expertflyer showed I class = L (L = this class is closed however the waitlist is open, please contact the airline).
So I contacted EK where I was told there is no waitlist for upgrades, but I got the upgrades without problems.
Expertflyer still shows I = L on this flight.

I'm having real problems, I upgraded my wife and daughter SFO-LAX and then when I try to do it it says there is no more upgrades allowed. I hadn't checked the likes of expertflyer before but looking now there doesn't seem to be more than one or two available around the date I want. Really frustrating as I can see that Business Class is barely a quarter full and they're still offering the full business reward option (i.e. not upgrade).

After lengthy discussions with Skywards about this, I was assured that they will release more upgrade seats nearer the time but couldn't give me a timescale nor would they waitlist - it's apparently for the Gold customer to keep phoning and hope I'm lucky enough to get timings right.

Having spent ages on the phone to 4 different operators to try this, my only conclusion would be that Emirates have changed all the logarithms for pricing and seat release this year and Skywards haven't really got a clue what's happening.

DXBPlat - you should be able to set up an alert on ExpertFlyer which will monitor availability and inform you if/when more of your required fare bucket becomes available. I don't know how reliable it is though.