My first thought was they want all the Plat for Life customers to keep flying to reach this new level. Then someday they will create a 750K level, etc.
But then I thought 70K for ten years means many have probably flown over 360K miles, right? Unless you did a lot of flying on other ST partners. I can't recall about business class multipliers or when they began? I did a lot of flying on KQ which is owned partly by AF/KL. When I began flying KQ, KLM owned a big percentage of KQ. Oh well. I'll be patient and see what happens.
I guess another obvious point is that ST is slowing fracturing and AF/KL want customers on their own metal rather than ST partners.