em123

I wish to book a London - Auckland return for the end of March. It will be on the new non-stop flight to/from Dubai and on the Emirates website it is quoting approximately £3600 for a business class return. Since I only really care about being in business class for the long 17 hour flights I am trying to book the shorter legs in economy. I could not see how to do this on the website so I called Emirates and was quoted £4500 which seems ridiculous. I got the impression that it needs to be booked as two returns and that is why the price is so high? I have previously booked something similar on other airlines without a problem so I am not sure if the agent made a mistake or whether this just isn't possible with Emirates. If anyone knows more about this then I would really appreciate advice.

eternaltransit

Unfortunately EK sell their tickets on an outbound-inbound basis rather than on a per-sector basis (so both sectors on the outbound LON-DXB and DXB-AKL have to be in the same booking class), so it sounds like the call center is trying to force it through as one LON-DXB round trip in Y with a DXB-AKL round trip in J nested inside it and then putting that all on one PNR.

Needless to say, the DXB-AKL sectors will be more expensive than a straight through LON-AKL because all ex-DXB fares command a premium for obvious reasons.

Looking fares on random dates at the time you are looking for, DXB-AKL is around 21.4-21.6k AED, which works out at around 4k. Add onto that a cheap 500GBP Y fare LON-DXB and voila, you have a 4.5k fare.

I'd take the 3.5k in J for all sectors

skywardhunter

Another option might be to book the entire return trip in economy then upgrade only the longer sectors, which is effectively just paying the difference. This should be possible in theory

em123

Thanks for everyone's help. I did ask the agent about buying an economy return and upgrading but he said he couldn't tell me how much the upgrade would cost. It looks like I'll have to get the business return or use another airline.

skywardhunter

It's a bit of a gamble. They can't quote you the cost without seeing your current fare and the exact fare you upgrade to, but if you're willing to read the fare conditions properly and take a bit of risk you should be able to predict it.

Though I'm not sure if EK takes the J fare as if it were a one-way on that sector or the component fare of a full J return. I think the latter based on upgrade costs I've seen quoted to me before. so 3600 whatever proportion of that is for AKL-DXB return, minus the proportion of your economy ticket for that part of the ticket, plus any change fees, is your upgrade cost.

ft101

Can do that with a miles upgrade but not by paying. The exception is if you get an email offer for a one sector upgrade, but I don't think the OP wants to rely on that.

skywardhunter

Yes, correct... now that you say this I remember asking the phone agent for a quote to upgrade just the long sector on my itinerary once and being told I have to upgrade all the way