Hi all

I have a flight booked in Y JFK - DXB return in July/August. I've managed to upgrade the return.

Both flights seem to be empty (according to my brother's expertflyer), but the DXB-JFK segment is showing no upgrade availability. I have 2 questions.

1 - Someone told me upgrades are being released closer to the departure date now, do you think that's right? As in the flight was booked too far in advance (December)?

2 - Reading on here, people keep recommending trying to upgrade at the airport (I'm a Gold already on the waiting list) - if there is a free seat in business and I have the miles to do so, will they do this if I ask? Or does it have to be a free AWARD seat that's available?

Thanks in advance
Francine

Francine,

Welcome to FT and the EK Forum.

EK's Inventory Management system works in weird and mysterious ways. The best advice I have for you is to ask your brother to set up a seat alert for you via his EF account. You're looking for "D" inventory on EK (ie Business Class Upgrade, which is also the same bucket as a Saver Award seat).

If there is space available and you're at the airport, the system should release the seat to you being Gold. But it may very well clear prior.

That's why an EF seat alert is valuable as their system will constantly monitor availability and as soon as something becomes available, it will ping you an email.

I find that sometimes upgrades are immediately available even if booked a long way in advance, and sometimes they are not released as available until about 2 weeks before the flight. In this, as well as in pricing, they do not seem to reward you for booking well in advance. Often prices are cheaper, for example, 2 months before the flight as opposed to 10 months. If you are booking well in advance, and your dates are a bit flexible, and ring Emirates, they will often tell you if certain dates are currently" showing upgrades as available.

They have 2 special upgrades for Golds on each flight. Call the Gold desk.

Also, as far as check in/ onboard goes, it's a bit weird. I asked for an upgrade at check in recently and was told the flight was full. I enquired again onboard and they actually had one last seat available in J.

It has nothing to do with how long in advance you booked that flight, they keep writing that you should try closer to departure. In fact I did try to upgrade two business class flights to First Class even 1 hour before departure or even Economy to Business around 1 hour before departure, it still keeps saying "try again closer to departure" and out of a sudden the function has been deactivated online. Later there are enough Business or First-Class seats available I had to find out. (what a shame?)

I tried with 80000 Business Rewards Miles and with my Gold-Card Miles or my accompanying passengers silver card, it's the same thing. The crazy thing is that we just spent around USD 40,000 on flight tickets and not even one instant upgrade on any flight.