They are going to a multi-tier ff program. So obviously if you got a lot of perks while they were in a single tier system, your perks will be diluted if you can no longer get to the higher tiers. EMS was never a perk available at booking until the past year. I'm not sure why people are expecting it would be available going forward for the lowest tier. That first tier is basically AAdvantage Gold and Gold don't get Y+ at booking or at check-in.

So now they basically have 4 tiers like AA. I'd say their Tier 2 is pretty good since you can get 4 mint upgrades cert. With AA, I didn't get any SWUs until EXP level. Their tier 3/4 seems quite lacking, since I don't see enough perks over Tier 2.

They are basically domestic first away from becoming a legacy at this point. And they will probably get there after NK merger.

This is no longer JetBlue of 10 years ago. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will realize these tiers are quite reasonable compared to competition.