Originally Posted by
BlondeBomber
"would mean three roundtrips YUL-NRT or two YUL-SIN or similar, which I am not willing to do."
Won't get much sympathy around here. If you don't fly enough to earn SE, you don't need it . . .

I think that the original idea floated was
to requalify for your present status level by topping up your account with a number of status miles purchased. What number of status miles to be purchased was never flushed out.
It was an alternative to the mileage run.
Turkish airlines allows the purchase of 10K status to help requalfiy for the next year.
Which would you rather do: purchase a limited amount of status miles to requalify or invest time and money to do a mileage run?
This idea does have some merit. The devil is however in the details.