I have EK seats for me and my wife for a return flight from Europe to Dubai next month, I made the booking a few months ago and now my plans have changed.

At the time of booking I upgraded my seat to J using my miles.

My miles were used for upgrade before expiry but they would have expired If i hadnt used them.

I have options to either cancel or change dates for my flight,

How is the best way for me to still use the miles that I have on the upgrade?

Do I change the date and look for a seat in J?

Can I cancel and then does EK give you a reciprocal extension to re-use these miles that would have otherwise have expired?

All help and strategy would be greatly appreciated, funnily enough i purchased these flights to use my miles!

AFAIK, you cant. The moment you cancel the original booking to in order to make the 'switch', the expired miles will disappear.

How many of your miles were expiring? If only part of the miles used for the upgrade were expiring, you could still save your 'expired miles' by changing only the legs that were upgraded using the 'non expired' miles. The system utilizes the miles on a FIFO method, so if you upgraded the onwards first, your 'expiring' miles would have been utilized there. So, if you make changes to your return which was upgraded using the 'non expiring' miles, you should be fine and will not lose any miles.

I upgraded my outbound using the miles and most likely I will have to modify the outbound date.

If i modify the outbound will they look for a seat in J or will they loop for a coach seat and look to upgrade afterwards?

They will first get a coach seat for you, you'll need to pay any change fees and fare differences, and then they'll upgrade that seat to J.

I may have been misinformed or misunderstood what I was informed by EK, but I was under the impression that if the new flight had availability to upgrade to then the upgrade could be transferred. If the upgrade was not available then the upgrade is cancelled and any expired miles then disappear

I experienced a similar situation in 2011 and during my conversation with the CSA, this is what I was told. Things could have changed, so it is always best to check with EK. All the better if it is how Dave Noble says it works.

This is my understanding also - I've never had to do it with expiring miles however.

An interesting question is what happens if the original booked class is not available... say you booked a Q ticket with a $200 change fee and then upgraded with miles to D. Can you pay $200 and change to a flight where Q is closed, but D is available?

in my (single) experience, you lose the miles when changing an upgraded flight to another with availability if the miles were expiring but it is very possible that the experience differs on which agent you get or that the rules have changed.

Again, in my few experiences, you need fare availability in the original booking class. To make a change, you need to cancel the original u/g, change and re-issue the ticket and pay any change fees etc, and then re u/g with miles.

Another random anecdote:

friend was flying IKA-DXB in Y. I changed his booking to J with miles as a surprise. Miles dedicated. He then went and changed his ticket with his TA for IKA-DXB without any idea the the ticket was in J [and apparently the TA never mentioned anything]. The upgrade stayed for the new flight IKA-DXB (re-issued ticket showed Business class) but miles were refunded. I don't know why/how this happened but maybe it tells us something about how the change happens (don't ask me what exactly it tells us haha)

I believe if I cancel the flight I will lose my miles, If Im correct and I change dates and long as the flights have upgrade availability at time of booking I shall be ok.

The only problem is the change fee / fare difference is almost as much as the original ticket price and I have no idea if / when I can actually plan another trip to Dubai from the EU when im currently resident in the US.

What I was hoping was for some magical way to get an extension on the miles.

Something more weird has happened to me. I bought a J flex out Y flex return last year with a stopover at DXB. Due to change in plans I had to cancel the stopover and fly to another airport(still J).

I changed the flights online and my flights were changed to F for the flight out of the UK and the next sector as well!!! ( for �20 or �30 change fee!!!!!).

At that point I assumed that since my ticket was J flex I was changed to an F saver.It could not have been an op up as it was around 40 days before the journey.

Miles were credited as Flex F!!!!!!!. I still don't know what happened . I did not pay a more than the usual fare for a J out Y return either.!!!!