For me, it's not about meeting some other competing airline's standards, AC is certainly not alone in failing to come up with a frequent flyer program that reliably persuades J travellers to be loyal.

I can easily hit SE every year under the new program if I do all my flying on AC where it makes some sense. I don't find the benefits offered to SE while flying with them in J to be worth paying extra for (or making up for a worse product than a competitor). And were I asked, most of the suggestions I'd offer to AC in terms of making the airport and in flight experience better for SEs wouldn't actually be anything beyond catching up to incremental improvements their competitors have made in the past 10 years.

Additional benefits in the award space is probably where the solution to the problem lies towards attracting my loyalty. The PR system is on the right track. SEs get a minimum of 6 worldwide J PR's per year, which to me is "interesting and worth running the numbers on". But it's just not quite enough these days. I'd prefer more powerful PRs versus having 6 of them every year. The BA space release certificates, AF/KLM offering F and additional J saver awards to Platinums only are the sort of thing that are interesting to me. AC has relationships with a few carriers that have F cabins. What about SE's having access to last seat T-7 EK/EY F space for 2 pax at special saver rates once per year?

It's up to them to get clever on this sort of thing if they want to.