Once upon at time I was one of BA's top 1,500 flyers by points earned (I can't do a conversion to EK miles in my head), although I'm now an economy class flyer on EK - which makes sense when it's your own company's money you're spending.

At BA there was plain gold, followed by a couple of extra benefits such as upgrade vouchers, then 'Gold Guest List' which included a really good, personalised, immediate answer telephone line, and then a 'Concorde Room' card to access the premium lounges at LHR and JFK, regardless of class of travel. The latter I found to be the equivalent of the DXB First Class lounge.

Am I right in thinking that EK Golds only get access to the business lounge? There are some ways in which EK can add extra 'hidden' elements of the Gold tier and provide more incentives to keep earning miles, without having to create extra tiers. And surely, judging by a lot of UAE architecture I've seen, gold will always be the very top tier, none of this platinum nonsense. Maybe 'White Gold'!