I am a gold member, and can just achieve that status each year by buying economy flex tickets. In the past I was willing to pay 30-40% more for the flex ticket to get my gold status. Now though looking at the HK - Glasgow fare at Xmas, the saver fare is HK$7773 and the flex fare is HK$13023
(Its $1000 if I needed to change date on the saver, so it still provides flexibility). Are Emirates doing this on all routes? Increasing flex fares to the point where they are nearly double the cost of saver fares is going to lose Emirates a lot of their frequent flyers .
Emirates will be losing me as a customer in the future with this price disparity, as without status lounge access at Dubai I would choose other airlines.