Fake sales?
 

On Emirates website, BOS - DEL in J is advertised as "from $3149*".
Looking through calendar, I only see fare of $5056+. Seems to me this is false advertising.

its the famous word 'FROM'. They only have to have a single seat at that price and then they can advertise it as FROM - very irritating

Another way they (and all other companies) market these low fares is that the lowest price fares are for the crappiest outbound and return times. I actually could have booked an LHR-DXB round trip for 298 GBP! That's a ridiculously low price.

However, on further inspection, the flight times were unfavourable. The favourable flight times, which I ended up booking, cost nearly twice as much.

It also depends a lot on the dates of travel. The marketed low fares are on dates that hardly anyone would want to travel on.

I've actually seen the opposite. A route advertised for ~$2800 actually available for $2100...go figure. I don't think they have good maths ;)

On a LHR-DXB who cares about the times since there's no connection? If you had a 21h layover in DXB with no Dubai Connect I'd understand but in a situation like that I'd take the 300GBP savings for a 3am wake-up or whatever it was

There are undoubtedly patterns of demand that will vary according to season ; more so on some sectors than others.

However, safe to say also that - on the back of experience beginning in the mid-eighties when the airline was created - Emirates would not have developed a successful & growing worldwide network by operating flights "on dates that hardly anyone would want to travel on"

Well, it's a bit more complicated for me than that. On my last holiday I effectively lost a day of my holiday because of travel.

I guess it depends if you need that extra day away or not. I have a very limited number of days of annual leave so need to maximise my time away on holiday whenever I can.

Similarly I've seen long connection times (6 to 8 hours) offered on the "Sales" fares but regular (2 - 4 hours) connection prices remain unchanged.

Having said all that, even paying double the sale 'from' price is still a LOT cheaper than BA. And the service itself is on another level.