No problem at all. That's how I would expect a good loyalty scheme to work (unlike the way the Lufthansa one is, where status apparently doesn't count for anything). At the same time, I have to tell you (and everyone here) that no less than 6 friends, for musical or leisure reasons, have flown with Emirates during the last 12 months and all have come back from their trips boasting of wonderful and generous upgrade experiences with Emirates. So I rather got the impression that Emirates doles these things out left, right and center. They were all on connecting flights, not O/D trips. The spiel always went something along the lines of "there was no space more in economy class so they had to put me in business class". So there's gold member loyalty for you. Not a single one of them, from Germany, Switzerland and France, are a member of the loyalty programme or even joined up. Of course, they now all think Emirates is just great, that there is no better airline!