On a side note, does anyone know what is up with the 'H' fare buckets? They always seem to be inconsistent with the rest of the data. For example, on some flights all classes except Y, E and R are zeroed out. But H remains displaying 9. Is there a reason for this?

H is for EK Holiday bookings

Ah, that explains it!

EF seems to have improved in terms of reliability in identiying upgrade / award availability at least a little way ahead of the flights. It's less useful however in the 24-72 hours before a flight when aspects of management are passed to local teams (and no I don't know exactly what and when! ;) )

Thanks
 

Just a line to thank Skywardhunter for the info. You're a star. I Will sign up for EF to avoid this embarassments in the future.

I lost available Y Seats on sale for the first outbound flight. So I need to call them for the Gold benefit anyway.... most likely I will buy the ticket over the phone.

I will post op-up experience if it happens (hope so - for more than 2 year I only turn right on boarding for short haul, now it's time to spend some miles).

Again, thanks a million.

You're welcome, and we're always happy to help here.

As for the Gold guarantee, best of luck, I've tried to use it in the past but it prices out ridiculously high as its full-fare Y (so often even higher than the Flex Plus price shown on the website, as already mentioned), in my case it was going to cost as much for return Y using the guarantee as one-way J and back Y both in Flex on a regular day. BUT you will literally be at the top of the list for op-ups so hopefully that'd work out!

(eternaltransit shared this nugget of wisdom with us recently, that within Flex Plus its further ranked by status and then fare bucket)

The problem in using the seat guarantee is that it's usually so full that J (or F) is 100% and there are no op-ups - all that's happened is someone (usually STF confirmed) has been IDB.

At least, all the times I used it in 2016 - no luck!

sorry that I am cherry-picking, but it's a Y-Class fare you have to pay and not a full fare (still expensive, sometimes more than a O Class fare, but have never seen Economy closed and O/I open...). Most of the time higher than the shown Flex+ Fare on the homepage, as there are different booking classes for Flex+ (for most routings R,E,Y). :):D

:confused::confused: What do you define as a full fare? By full-fare Y I mean it's the Y fare bucket, which is the most expensive fare in Economy, typically, vs the other fare buckets that are generally considered discounted off Y

IATA YY for economy cabin, presumably

Hm true, hadn't considered that, but that's not airline specific and EK doesn't publish that fare, IATA does

Well if we want to be really technical, IATA generates -files - the fare, but the tariff is calculated based on input from EK over routes they operate, and is published by ATPCO :)

:D sometimes I don't believe you when you say you work in hospitality...

So on a LHR-JFK they take fares of all the 97 airlines (made up figure, I know it's probably not 97!) that operate that route and work it out from there?

Yes, but remember that on LHR-JFK there are the anti-trust JVs so there are only a few airlines.

Also, some airlines refuse to accept YY fares on some routes - it's only really used these days for two reasons, creating a benchmark for concessionary travel and for routes where a carrier doesn't want to bother generating a fare.

Basically for every route, a carrier decides whether to participate or not.

quite a bit off topic but:
the full fares are public (okay not on the homepage but in Amadeus etc, filed with 7 in the end for EK eg ...AE7. It's a bit a 'fake full fare' as normally - as et explained - there are full fares from iata (iirc yif in Y, cif in J and fif in F), where you can combine nearly every airline with each other and with any routing (there are some limitations...). *geek mode off* :cool:

edit: lot already mentioned above... :o jetlaged sorry...