Currently hold the inbound of a redemption ticket, booked in A class. I called to see if I could change the dates.
I'm told I have to pay $25 fee because 'the fare bucket changed' despite the ticket explicitly stating 'date change - Free'.

The least of my worries to be honest that fee but I find it a bit twisted (something that the agent acknowledged as well) to pay for something when I shouldn't.

Currently the intended day of travel doesn't have availability in Z class and the flight is even closed for wait listing. On EF it shows P4A4 (searched as inbound to make sure the availability according to the POS is accurate).

The QF cancer has crept into EK. That's my gut feeling. We will see more posts about joyous FT'ers managing to score an upgrade or a reward seat 330 days out.

By the way, EK415 out of SYD is wide open in Z. But let's face it who would want to wake up at 3AM (after having flown from CBR the night before) for that 6AM departure?
The only logical flight I could change to is ADL's EK441 which is thankfully wide open.

To add to the above. This is from Skywards:
http://www.skywards.com/help_faq.aspx?skinid=2

A fare bucket change fee if you stay in the same fare bucket ("A")?

If staying at a hotel the night before, wouldn't need to wake up at 3 am unless very slow getting ready. I would take that flight ( and have indeed booked that flight ) since it is a nice daytime flight to Dubai that arrives conveniantly in the early afternoon

There is nothing, imo, illogical about that flight and is the one I book by choice

As far as fees go, if changing dates on a flex award, there should be no charge

I don't see this as a "QF Cancer" , just an agent not being au-fait with A class award changing to Z class.

I agree with you as I would prefer taking the morning flight IF we lived in Sydney. But when taking the overall travel time into account: flying to SYD the evening before, collecting bags, going to a hotel, checking in, sleeping (or trying to), then waking up, checking out, catching the ride to SYD, then checking in for the flight amounts to about 10 hours extra travel time. Plus I am not merely getting off in DXB, will have another 7 odd hours of travel (including transit and flying) before landing in BEY from which I would then have to travel anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 hours by road (depending on traffic). Taking all this into perspective, any extra hour taken at the beginning of this trip will add to the list of exhausting factors.

What irritates me about the whole issue is EK is treating a flex reward seat in F the cheap way. They really got it wrong with moving rewards into the same fare bucket, even more so because it's for F. Mind you, I didn't pay 2000 dollars for those 285k miles needed to redeem a round trip in F, more like several folds as much, yet they slap on those ridiculous 'fees' and 'restrictions' that we're supposed to swallow. And to make the matter worse they make it nearly impossible to get onto the flight of choice despite being wide open in all classes.

I might add for all the 'closed off' flights in Z, there are 7 O's (flex business) and as much in economy. Like a cafe with those frequent cards. You turn up for the 6th free coffee and you get told, sorry you will to have pay and come back later (say at 2 am when you don't really need one), while others turning for cups of tea or babycinos are all good.
What the?! Why treat F so differently?

Here's an update/observation on how Z is opened up following a lengthy call with EK. Remember we noticed that availability open up about 8-10 weeks in advance. Currently it's going month by month. There is a team that selectively opens up reward seats for the following month. Despite being in the last week of April, they are only looking at May.

I think what EK is doing is not very far off from what LH does, that is blocking F rewards until 2 weeks out. I am not sure how/if this is turning any extra revenue or profit but can't see the logic in adopting such measure while ignoring currently booked rewards.

The situation with me at least is that I have a partly used F flex reward that I want to change but they're saying it will have to come out of Z (despite being booked in A) and therefore need 'special' authorisation to get that Z seat released but because it's 3 months out, it has to be sent to a different department for approval. The ticket explicitly says: 'Change fee - Nill' but I've heard from 2 different agents $25-$50 for re-issue fee. That can't be right because as far as I know if this was a paid fare and that fare is no longer available, it will be honoured since it has been partly flown. It's not like they could cancel the inbound on this ticket and refund me the miles, because it's against the fare rules. So how could they have this double standard?!

Without wishing to sound trite - because they can. IMHO it seems to me that EK have become so large and successful now that passengers are becoming an inconvience or perhaps just a necessary evil that have to be tolerated as part of their financial business model. They have lost touch with their customers and do not miss the experiance one little bit I suspect . Until that disconnect starts to manifest itself with rapidly falling pax numbers and unsustainable yields why would they bother to act differently. They are not in business to deal with the out of the ordinary situations and now no longer have or feel the need to help in any way or go the extra mile. They manage the business through price and yield algorithms nowadays and are not interested in suggestions or constructive critism they just plough on in the manner of the juggernaught that they have become and currently it is working just fine. As customers we are only a PNR now and we should get used to it. We buy tix (or reward tix) on certain dates for certain routes and we should stick to it and not expect anyone to do anything but the minimum to help us if we need to make changes. They are there for the 99% (or whatever the percentage is) that "buy and fly" expecting to do what they agreed to when they bought the seat and who do not expect anything other than to get from A to B safely and in reasonable comfort with a good IFE system most of the time. The "good old days" of EK building their airline in the face of stiff and meaningful competition are well and truly over, they are now a global "legacy" carrier in my book and they are not going to be going back to the "bend over backwards" philosophy any time soon. RIP to that.

I hear you on this one. But surely part of their business model is hedging on a significant chunk of their customers cancelling/failing to show/changing their reservations. I dare to put this figure at around 20% of the bookings. I think EK is still building itself, though no longer establishing itself but rather expanding its network/fleet/services. After all it's been in existence for almost 3 decades. Part of what keeps them going and managing to shrink what we perceive as 'generosity' or 'tendency to bend back' is the fact that they don't really have competition. In all the markets they serve the options are quite limited, and where there options they usually are of a lesser calibre (I know someone will disagree). Most airlines out there are on a shrinking stance. EK's fleet growth in one year, particularly by aircraft type and seat count, equals some of its 'competitors' whole fleets!

I think it's more of an oversight/unintended consequence than an intended outcome the situation I am in. I explained to them that had I been advised that the rewards in F will come out of a different RBD I would have changed it prior to this new rule coming into effect. Also, at the time of booking, I wasn't able to select a date further than 3 May 2013 because it was at the maximum available then (remember I booked this in June 2012). I am still waiting to hear back from them, both EK CS agents I had spoken to seemed like they understood what's going on and were apologetic and helpful.

I have two data points that I can share.
I was looking for an upgrade J->F on EK500. Expert flyer showed F wide open and just 1 seat occupied. No Z inventory. I spoke to the call center several times and they would just not confirm the upgrade. They opened up the Z inventory around 2 days before the flight and I managed to get the upgrade. On boarding the flight, I noticed there were just 3 of us in the entire F cabin. All the seats except mine (1K) on the right aisle were vacant. Not sure, what being so stingy with the upgrade inventory achieved for EK in the end but from the strategy they are following, it seems to me that they don't want to be in a situation where they have to pass on any 'revenue' in F just because the've opened up their upgrade inventory and the F cabin is getting full. Only when they are sure that they aren't going to be able to sell their F inventory, they'll start to put up seats in Z.

I recently booked a trip for myself, wife and baby (myself on separate ticket with wife and baby on another) in Y and after checking the D inventory on EF and confirming the same with the call center (DXB CDG retn av, none on DXB-BOM retn). I go ahead and book the tickets and then call them back to process the upgrade and they tell me that there is just no upgrade inventory available at all and I should have checked with them before. I told her, I already did, and think to myself I got a real 'bozo' and keep the phone down and decide call them back again after 5 minutes. I use MMB in the meantime and it shows me no availability on DXB-CDG but availability on CDG-DXB but gives the error message that "The system is experiencing issues" and to call the Skywards call center to process the upgrade. I call the call center and on the other end is a fairly nice fellow and he says that he can see the upgrade but can't process it. He says he'll need to send a message to DXB and only they can process it and to check back after 30 mins. I start to feel extremely frustrated and w.t.f. is going on when I had checked and confirmed D inventory and start to think whats the point of hitting Platinum if all they are trying is to fool customers to book and then not offer the upgrade. He calls me back after an hour and tells me that both the DCB-CDG and CDG-DXB up for both me and my wife have been processed.

I decide to call them back again to check up on the DXB-BOM upgrades and am met by a very nice and helpful lady who looks at my bookings and then informs me that she could try and get at least my BOM-DXB-BOM upgrades processed. Puts me on hold for over 10 minutes and then informs me that she's managed to confirm my seat in J for BOM-DXB-BOM. I tell her that's nice as wife and baby can now travel in J but then she informs me that baby needs to be upgraded to J before she can be allowed into the J cabin. Problem is that baby is on my wife's pnr and until she has an upgrade, baby can't be upgraded. So, I ask her is there a way around it. She says yes, puts me on hold for 15 minutes, cancels all our upgrades, unlinks the baby's booking from my wife, links it to mine, then processes all the upgrades again and the baby as well. Was on the phone with her for close to 50 minutes but it turned out well in the end - my wife just makes 1-2 international trips in a year (and the ones to SE Asia are on LCCs) and I had really want her to get the EK experience including F lounge access on this trip and it turns out that she will. I am fine traveling in Y but am hoping that EK will open up its award inventory a couple of days before the flight and I'll get lucky.

Two main learnings for me:
1. The folks at DXB keep tinkering with the upgrade inventory on a day to day basis and sometimes the system may not be able to process an upgrade even when it is available, because 'our technical team is continuously making changes'.

2. If for some reason things don't work out, persist until you come across a helpful agent who is actually interested in looking at the issue you are facing rather than giving you lip service.

So, ime, its a mixed bag with EK. I get frustrated very easily initially when nothing seems to be going right, begin to curse them and then when it all somehow works out in the end, I kind of feel nice that its a good thing that I fly with EK.

I think with EY picking up a stake in Jet, competition on the Indian subcontinent should now be steadily increasing. Also, I read of some news that pax will have the benefit of immigration clearance from Abu-Dhabi itself on US bound flights and no more long queues at the immigration counter while entering the US - I've stood in line at JFK for close to 2.5 hours a couple of times. With close to 40% of the faces on EK501 continuing on to EK201, my guess would be that EY is looking to leverage Jet as a feeder to take away a nice chunk of that from EK.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I totally agree with pt.2. I've had great dealings when calling towards the evening Australia time when their local offices are closed. While during the day I get mostly 'huffing and puffing' agents that want to give a lesson or two based on their own views/opinions, and even questioning my travel plans as well as the reason for calling to check on something (when I had been asked the day before to call back the next morning).

I still recall once speaking with someone in their Melbourne office who warned me that the Arabian Airpass offer is NOT good business for EK and that he's very sure it will taken down very soon because people like me were taking advantage of it. That was 2 years ago, but ever since I noticed how the staff ex-NZ and India are way nicer and willing to help because they want to make sure things are done proper, not to mention that they really appreciate that thank you at the end of the call.

Perhaps that's a valid observation from an operational perspective but from what I know, the EY deal has a lot to do with personal connections (remember, it's still the same man who was running the show at GF and got 9W to wetlease them their planes) than just the operational/market objectives.

Well here's a final update on changing a partially flown reward ticket in F that was booked last year. A very friendly Melbourne based CS agent changed the flights, while acknowledging that DXB hasn't responded to the previous request. What a relief!

Persistence pays :)

Another update that may be of good news to others aggravated by this lack of availability in F reward inventory.

It is now possible to waitlist a reward booking which was originally ticketed for a different date! Confirmation will need to wait until to the calendar month prior to departure (e.g. intended flight October, confirmation should come through in early September).

I should add that this feature is limited to Gold/Plat only.