Although that the new program has many cons I must say that there are many sweet spots and pros that might make it more interesting.
Firstly, the cash & points option, any cash option they will offer it will always be about 1 cpp. Some other programs do offer this value in cash & points only at a certain level, but FB does it at any 2 or 3 options they offer.
Second, recently I was able to book G class for a saver award in economy without even being an elite member. AF used to release only X class for saver award. On expert flyer there were 0 seats available in coach but on AF there were seats available for all the flights that day!
Also, many routes had a drop on the points required (like cdg-jfk, 22k instead of 25k).
And lastly, I see more and more jfk-tlv with delta, 29k +$10 direct flight. This never happened before.
Even for business class, I was looking for a ticket less than a week from now and all the daily flights were available in O with more than 4 seats each!
I'm sure there are other advantages but this is what I found out for now.