Hi all,
New member here looking for advice. My regular travel profile has meant EK silver status for the past few years, but with the recent changes to Skywards I will fall 1,000 miles short of retaining this in future. I'm hoping to find some way to boost my Tier Miles at the least cost/hassle. My current thoughts are (1) to stopover in DXB on a trip and do a flight to Muscat or Doha and back or (2) to get a paid upgrade on one leg of one trip. I also thought about making an outbound flight in a separate month from the inbound so if the outbound qualifies me the inbound will count towards the next 13 month period but that's starting to get complicated.
As far as I can tell there are no other avenues to gain Tier Miles (affiliates etc).

Any comments on the above or any other suggestions?

Any thoughts on whether it is worth spending a bit extra to stick with one airline to gain the program rewards?

Thanks all.