As a Y flyer who earns GO the hard way (in Y), I can certainly understand CX's desire to make this more revenue driven and essentially screw people like me (not high margin guys). They have a business to run in a brutally competitive and low margin industry and that's a fact of life.

I can empathize with over crowded lounges and long business class boarding/checkin lines. I don't really care either way, but many do. I think the easy solution would just be to chop Green/Silver from the lines and then maybe silver from lounges and get rid of the +1 for gold (I've definitely brought in +1s to lounges as a Gold). Might literally be as simple as that.

Of course I don't have the data to back it up, but maybe keeping things simple and rewarding J/F fliers with better mileage bonuses would be the way to go.

Lots of interesting comments on this thread, and sadly, a fair bit of ego as well (I never understood why people had so much pride in giving their money to some other guy - but so it goes). Will be interesting to see how it plays out.