I think you also have the issue of X airline is great, they won all those awards - yes they won all those awards because of their great first class cabin, but most of us are not flying in first class or even business class. In order to make the top cabins great they've crammed as many people as possible into the back and cut what little quality there is to what is provided.

So a lot of people choose Emirates (for example) because "I've heard it's really great," and it is pretty nice up front. Except that they are flying coach and their friend who raved about it was up in first class. Quite a different experience.

You've also got the problem of people going on past reputation or experience and thinking the airline is still the same as it was 20 years ago (like the guy that goes into every review of JAL on FT and rants about his bad experience with them back in the 70s).