Having got some hours on PPL and had more than a few goes in the BA sims, the more information that comes from the flight crew the better for me.

In the past on long haul the flightdeck made an initial welcome announcement then one when we were in the cruise. I notice this second one rarely happens these days - presumably because we have the moving map.

I find most other airlines, especially VS, give fairly poor flightdeck announcements IMHO.