This is bad.
I've just flown over 30K in international J in the last few weeks. The food enhancements are certainly a welcome change. But, the mediocre in-flight service hasn't gotten any better. It hasn't been uncommon at all for seats to not work, the cabin to be a mess, etc. I could not imagine paying another $600 roundtrip for what I usually found to be pretty average-to-poor inflight service. I was OK with it since I was using eVIPs...unacceptable with this co-pay thing. If AA were also raising the bar with their inflight service, then they MAY have a leg to stand on with raising the price of it...but how they raise the price & lower the service at the same time is just wierd.
I know, I know..there's tons of arguments to be made about the cost of a coach+co/pay ticket vs. a paid business one.
I suppose it's now a HUGE incentive for near-EXP plats to finish those end-of-year MRs they're on the fence about.
If I drop out of EXP at some point, it would just be a huge incentive for me to nail a Row31 seat.