I had the gate upgrade once at DXB in the F lounge - request made at reception, phone call made then "boarding pass will be issued at the gate sir if there is space".

But recently it's been done straight away at reception, so I guess it must be up to the controller at the time.

Given the amount of emails going around about cutting costs and maximising revenue in each little EK fiefdom, the latest reports do not sound too unsurprising.

Any word on them revoking the new operational upgrade procedure?

Haven't heard anything yet

I didn't want to chance it tonight as was on saver J. Finally all sorted after some angry tweets

(Not at extramileage specifically) - why do people feel this is a problem, if they need to wait for a while to find out? I've had the opposite experience where (in DXB) passengers have definitely moved from a full J cabin to an F seat, to allow me to upgrade. This was on flights where Y was not oversold.

I was really pleased with this. You should try flying an airline like BA, where such space-available upgrades don't exist.

well if you want to use the F lounge in DXB it would be annoying to wait until the gate....

Good point!

That is obviously true! But OTOH I can also understand that EK wants to try to sell the seats (by that time quite possibly at Flex+ fares) rather than just take a few miles off the balance sheet.
I presume they have a good 'feel' for late selling F seats. I have a J booking AMS/DXB in October and it is already offering me to upgrade with miles...
Nothing for the other three legs of that trip (CPT/DXB, DXB/AMS and DXB/CPT). :(

Cpt is a difficult one