You can pick apart details in the article, but overall it's my experience that frequent flyer benefits are 'way less than they were 3 or 5 years ago:

• I can still upgrade as much as I used to, but the value of the upgrade isn't nearly as great. First class used to mean enough space to work or relax, along with a decent meal and good service. Now 1st class has less room, there seem to be fewer FAs per person (so reduced service), and meals have gone down in quality and, in many cases, have disappeared altogether.
• Unlike cordelli, I have had issues in claiming awards. Whereas UA used to be reasonable in making international premium-cabin award seats available in advance, such seats are absolutely non-existent on some routes, no matter how far in advance I want to make reservations.

There's no great mystery to me why the FF value has gone down: airlines prices are generally an enormous bargain. And low-cost airlines have demonstrated time and again that more customers will buy a $240 ticket on Bob's Cut-Rate Airline than will buy a $270 ticket on Full Service Airlines.

And that should be very troubling indeed for frequent fliers. Because if the major airlines hope to compete with the Southwests and others who have shown how to turn a profit by providing bare-bones service and no significant FF benefits, it's hard to see how that will happen with FF benefits remaining even at their current level.