Your choices depend on your hot buttons. Although I am OK to pay a small premium to fly EK to focus my points in as few programs as possible I am not willing to spend my or my companies money like water. Today I booked a DXB-LHR-DXB in Club World on BA for Aed12,865 when Emirates wanted Aed28,000 for Biz class. I used to shop EK against EY where there were good savings sometimes but EY seem to have joined the EK bandwagon and they priced almost identically to EK for this trip. Status means virtually nothing on EK or EY if travelling in Biz or First so it matters not to me whether I have any status flying Biz on other carriers because I will effectively get the same perks as I would flying Biz or First on EK with status. If one flies Economy in the main then a little status can go a long way and the smaller cost differences (in cash not percentage terms) can make it more worthwhile to stay loyal to a carrier so that the status can help you out in small but important ways.. The few extra points you earn from having status is also pretty meaningless to me because I literally have several million points on a variety of carriers that I have yet to use and so I do not miss them - again this may be something that is important to you more than me. Good luck with your choices.