Moflav

"Emirates award information is temporarily unavailable while we wait for our information vendor to fix an issue. Thank you for your understanding".

Hopefully resolved soon!

Metanoia

Yeah not so happy about this right now but at least we can search EK's website (sort of) for rewards.

ExpertFlyer Voice

The issue has been resolved, thank you for your patience.

Bossarb

Has something changed in EF's ability to show upgrade availability on Emirates? I'm sure it used to work pretty well but I was searching yesterday for upgrades from Economy to Business on MAN-DXB and BHX-DXB in late Jan/ early Feb and literally couldn't find a single seat in fare class D (Saver award and upgrade), although there were plenty in class O (Flex award). But when I went to the Emirates website and put in a few of the same dates and routes I could find upgrade availability there, which I was able to book.

Has the EF system stopped working properly? Or am I seeing extra availability on the Emirates website because I'm logged in as a Gold member? Is there a better method of finding these upgrade seats?

Thanks!

thijsseh

There definitely seems to be something wrong with award / upgrade availability on EF. I searched for Z availability the other day, nothing showed up. Decided to put in an alert: immediately got the email to confirm that Z was available. Thought that maybe something had come up in the minute between checking and activating the alert so checked again. Nothing. Submitted the alert again: Another email. This was earlier this week. So 'a better method' seems to be to set alerts (at least for now).
I'll try to contact EF to query this when I get a chance.

Bossarb

Thanks. The problem with setting alerts is that on my usual London-Dubai route there are 11 flights per day and I might have flexibility across 3 days in each direction, so I'd need to set 200+ alerts individually! I hope EF can sort it out because as far as I know there is no independent site like rewardflightfinder nor a proper search facility on the Emirates website itself (unless I've missed that).

Bossarb

Any update from ExpertFlyer Voice ?

ExpertFlyer Voice

Sounds like married segment logic, make sure your search is only for that segment which the alert is for.

There is no issue showing EK awards when available. If someone has a specific example please email us directly.

Results from https://www.ExpertFlyer.com

thijsseh

Yes, I agree that the problem I indicated seems to have been caused by married segment logic. I think (but I invite comments from people who understand this better than I do), that it has to do with the difference between awards and upgrades. We know that these come from the same fare buckets (Z for first and D for business), but awards are issued for the entire leg (i.e. all segments), whist upgrades are (or at least can be) issued on a ‘per segment’ basis. To clarify, one cannot book an award CPT/DXB/JFK in ‘mixed cabins’ (just like one cannot purchase a cash ticket ‘mixed’). But it is entirely possible to upgrade a single segment using Skywards (miles). So when one puts in a query CPT/DXB/JFK, one gets the married segment result: only a ‘yes’ when BOTH segments are available. Lesson: when looking for upgrades, search by segment (unless you really only want to upgrade the entire sector). I hope I have made this clear!

Bossarb

My problem was nothing to do with married segments because it was a direct flight (two threads have been merged here). It was pretty simple: I looked for D fares on EF, couldn't see any for the days I needed but then went onto Emirates.com and they were there for precisely the same route and day and flight.

I will look again when I have time.

DYKWIA

Isn't this the issue of different availabilities for different markets? ISTR ExpertFlyer uses the US availability for its searches. So, there may be nothing available for US, but plenty of availability for UK.

thijsseh

Do you mean POS (Point of Sale) here? You can set the POS in EF for quite a variety of markets.

DYKWIA

Indeed I did.

Bossarb

That implies that there would be different availability for an upgrade fare class depending on POS. Is that really correct? I've never heard of that under any other airline loyalty program. Different fare pricing, sure - but different availability of a reward seat for the identical flight??

Bossarb

[deleted]... theory about EF not seeing multiple seat availability in class D doesn't seem to be correct when I do more research...