I've seen it only on those occasions when Y is heavily oversold and J is pretty much empty, requiring 40+ op-ups from Y. A good time for this scenario is around "Back to school" for DXB-JFK, late August to early Sep. Even though I had an indication I was op-ed up DXB-JFK at BOM itself, I couldn't get a new BP printed at DXB until just about an hour or so before departure.

Agree with jackiedada - they usually only process op-ups at 1 hour before departure, this is in order to allow standby pax to get on or be offloaded. The only time that it's done before is when they are 100% sure they need to op-up and that's when Y is 40 over! (or 30 over but there's only 35 seats in F/J combined) or some combination like that.

Most of the time its done in DXB at t-1 because things change all the time.

At outstations its different because the liklihood of no-shows is far less - people tend to turn up for a flight and more likely than not there will be no connecting flight unlike in DXB. In outstations it is often done slightly earlier ie check in. In fact I've only ever been opped up at DXB at the gate!

I think the general rule is whenever the load controller is sure of loads he or she will start moving things around. There's always exceptions and last minute changes - I mean at DXB I once got a double op-up which only happens when someone makes a mistake and that mistake is usually: T-24/6 you get upgraded and someone doesn't put a note on the manifest this was an op-up, then the next controller comes on shift and still needs to move people around and then moves you.

Something similar happened to me me a few weeks ago. I had a LGW-DXB-DEL flight which was a Y saver without the upgrade restrictions. This ticket was bought a few months ago and I had upgraded the LGW DXB sector to J using miles. The DXB DEL sector had zero upgrade availability and therefore I called EK and asked them to wait list me for an upgrade with miles.

This did not work out till the day of my flight and I just asked the lounge dragon on reaching DXB whether there was any change in my wait list booking .

I was given a new J boarding pass (this was around 3.5 hrs prior to my flight). I was then op'd up to F at the gate.

I didn't think too much about this as I have upgraded to J with miles online several times and have then been op'd up to F at the gate.

The weird thing is that skywards miles have not been deducted so I wonder if I got a double op up instead of an upgrade with miles and then an op up.:D

Looks like that.. Lucky you^