Upgrade at check-in, how much?
 

Hi,

in two weeks i will fly from FRA to DXB on Emirates for a hopefully wunderful week in Dubai. It will be my first flight on Emirates... ^
I'm not yet sure which class to book, Y or C...

Now my question:

I know from other airlines that it is possible to buy an upgrade from Y to C at the check-in or even in the plane when boarding.
Or aren't there any differences when booking Y and upgrading or directly booking C?

Does anyone know how Emirates handles this and eventually what an upgrade at check-in will cost, if possible...

Any experiences?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Never heard of such a practice at EK.

I think you have to pay the rate for business class, if you like to fly in J.

There will be no operational upgrades, because the flights are not full at this time of the year and if you have no status with EK, upgrades will go to gold or silver skywards members.

dusordua is right, I also doubt that EK offers an upgrade option at check-in. I upgraded my flight from FRA to DXB in June, but with miles in advance.

I upgraded Y -> C at AKL checkin, they charged the difference between paid fare and lowest C fare, which at that time was only NZ$300 for AKL-MEL!

So you paid the lowest C (J) fare. I do not see a saving.

I would buy the lowest J fare in advance, to make sure I will have a business class flight and can select the seat I want to sit in.

This maybe useful if you have a long itinery, but only want to upgrade some segments. I tried to upgrade an overnight MAN-DXB segment a few months ago, but the C class was already full. They did imply that this would have been possible if seats were available.

Cheers,
Rick

That's a good point. Also, you don't always know beforehand if you feel like/ need to fly C. When I have had a very busy time at work I really do appreciate it but when I'm fit I don't always need it so much.

This is interesting.

I am on a RTW KL/EK/KQ... C ticket, and have some more EK flight coming up this summer. According to the RTW rules it cost 1000 usd pr. flight segment to upgrade C - F. However if you take a look at emirates.com

DXB-BKK businesss class one way fare = 4300 AED = 1170 USD
DXB-BKK first class one way fare = 5600 AED = 1524 USD

Making the difference roughly 350 usd. I wonder if this is what would be offered at check in.

OT:
hmm... Point wise this upgrade is 32500 if i remember correctly. 350 usd = 32500 points... not the best point/usd deal... i suppose - but
32500 points = 1000 usd (as the rules for the rtw state) this sounds better :)

Well my employer does not allow C fares so I paid this out of my own pocket as the fare was really cheap and I wanted to try EK C :cool:
Anyway the loads in EK C AKL-MEL are really low, I was the only one in there! :p