I would list the benefits of Super Elite as follows:

1) The phone is always answered on the first ring. Always.

2) When I request reward travel for my wife, I always get exactly what she wants, when she wants it. Truly amazing - simply ask and ye shall receive. The reward center folks also answer the phone on the first ring.

3) When I ask for an upgrade, about 60% of the time I get it on the phone (weeks ahead of time), the other 40% of the time, I get it at the airport. So far this year (I'm at 80K Q miles now) I have never travelled coach.

4) You can carry as much baggage as you want, as long as the boxes are not over 70 pounds each. Normally, I don't check in any baggage, but once I checked in 550 pounds, and they helped me carry it. The 4 piece limit is not really enforced, if the staff recognize you by face at the airport.

5) They send out lots of upgrade certificates. Every time I make a round trip YYX-ZRH-YYZ, they send me another two certificates. I have not even used the 8 they sent at the beginning of the year, just the ones they keep sending in the mail.

6) The check-in people tend to allow a lot of slack if you screw up on a restricted ticket, for example, once I showed up a day early for a flight with a ticket that didn't allow changes to the date without a huge fee, the person explained to me how the ticket worked, and how I should pay more attention to the fare restrictions in the future, then checked me in and asked if I wanted an upgrade. Very nice of them. I had not even known that the ticket had the wrong date on it.

I have found that SuperElite status makes no difference whatsoever once you are actually inside the airplane. The staff that are naturally friendly and motivated to give nice service give the same nice service to everyone, and the staff that are indifferent do as little as they can get away with, for all passengers.