Well, that explains a lot about airline product quality. :-)

I have to admit, I've always found the option of a real PE offering to be quite attractive, assuming the quality is good. I don't mind paying a reasonable premium for comfort, and would be much happier trying to use my SWUs if my fallback was something tolerably comfortable instead of the awfulness that is coach on most airlines these days. As others have alluded to, presumably this will somewhat reduce competition for upgrades to business as well, which is a nice side effect.

On the other hand, when considered in the context of the recent reduction in the number of SWUs for (most) EXPs, it's really a striking devaluation of EXP benefits. Going from either 8 to 4 SWUs or limiting the SWUs from going Y->PE or PE->J would have seemed fairly reasonable to me, but doing them both in close order is really a significant clawback in benefits, and a sneaky one to boot given that it's broken into two separate-seeming announcements.