Could be wrong, but I believe if your original base ticket is booked in miles, even if you pay for a cash upgrade, you still won't earn any elite or award miles on the flight ticket, since it was a 100% award ticket to start.

Open to be corrected / challenged, but that's my understanding at least.

You might be right.

I checked and F on miles will give me 1750 Tier Miles, no mention of Guest Miles.

Seems that Residence is marked as "Seat Selection", meaning no extra mileage.

Will confirm after the flight.

Booked Residence last night and got a call today to arrange chauffer and meet & greet service for departure and transit (though my onward flight is not in Residence). No attempt to get me to select Residence for my return trip.

I will be travelling from Heathrow to Phuket in Jan of 2027 and currently deciding on whether to book The Residence. Wondering if anyone has any experience with bookings from LHR - Phuket flying the residence with the connecting flight only available in Business for the Abu Dhabi - Phuket leg. Curious to know if the benefits of the Residence extend to the layover at Abu Dhabi even if my onward journey is in Business.

As long as a connection (ie you don’t leave the airport) then yes the benefits follow through. Escort on arrival at AUH to F lounge, and then escort (perhaps with buggy) to your next flight. Escort AND porter - who boarded and put my case in the overhead. Nothing at Phuket though. I didn’t do Phuket but did LHR-AUH-KUL. Loved it.

What I was told by the residence concierge is that the residence benefits are only applicable to the particular flight. So you receive meet and greet upon arrival at AUH. Who will presumably escort you to the business lounge.

you should have minimum first lounge access. I recently arrived in F while transiting to J and had F lounge access

That's nice. My transit is from residence to first and I was told no vip room during transit because my departure was in first. Only if I was departing in residence would the VIP room be available.

Addition of A380 AUH-BKK has me concerned they might eliminate a different route. Unlikely or reasonable worry?

Of course even then I assume their only N.A A380 route would be last to be cut, right?

You will have F lounge definitely- the private room is exactly that. I paid for it but wouldn’t again. Read my trip report for details - I have done two - one for inbound and outbound.

I am still planning to book the private room despite your review because my transit is overnight from 1am to 9am. It was a toss up between that, the AUHotel (which based on some accounts is not much better than the private room in terms of cost and amenities and convenience), and a nearby hotel (travelling to and fro means at best 5 hours of sleep).

Got you - enjoy. Just remember availability of the private room with sofa (not bed) isn’t guaranteed- it’s first come first served whereas a bed in the AUH hotel is pretty much guaranteed. Interested in your thoughts post trip.

Fingers crossed I make the trip. It's sometime in the future but I've been nagged by family to cancel. So I've dutifully booked a backup on CX (but J! Oh, the suffering).

Scheduled for the residence Mar 10th AUH-YYZ. Initially thought it was gone, but they are resuming flights to Toronto and also to MLE where we are now.

does anyone have a residence customer service or concierge number if that even exists? I just have a couple questions.

I have heard that they are not allowing you to go from MLE-AUH-YYZ on a single PNR. My bookings were done separate and not a single PNR and wanted to ask about that.

The ‘Residence lounge’ aka ‘private room’ is separate from the First lounge, somewhat like TPR with SQ. You can access the F lounge when arriving in Residence even if your next flight is in Business, but you cannot use the Residence lounge if your onward flight is not in the Residence.

Anyway the Residence lounge doesn’t have a bed. If you want to sleep there are private bedrooms downstairs in the Business lounge.