I imagine there are a lot of factors that come into play. We did it in May and went with BA. But did it through BA holidays which gave us 560 Tier points, so 40 short of Silver (from no status at all). If you have status then that may not make a difference.

I don’t know what the cost differential is but we paid £1500 each which included the hotel and breakfast for a week. For example when I looked at QR for Business to BKK recently, it was just a non-starter as far too expensive. I didn’t look at the time to DXB but I imagine it would have been far more.

And it was fine. Both day flights, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.