I am struggling to see what makes you think HKIA is this incredibly efficient. Maybe I am missing something terribly here but the distance between each gate at HKIA in my experience is at least twice or more of an average U.S. airport such that to walk even just the distance of 10 gates to get to where you need to be - it's going to take significantly longer in a straight line path no matter how you count the time. Also, HK has always comes across to me, as a place where the rich get preferential treatment whereas the peasants and the cattle class are left to rot. It's very hard for me to vision an accurate experience of an economy class pax ex-HKG since I have not personally been one as far as I can remember although I have heard quite a bit of horror stories re: how Cathay mistreat economy class pax especially if they are not westerners or on package tours and were left stranded in the airport and etc.. Are these stories not true? I find it hard to believe HKG will be more humane towards economy class pax than some of the more egalitarian major European airports, especially the German ones, just strikes me as quite improbable knowing the prevailing culture in HK vs. Germany.

There are many people who pay more to fly in economy than some who rode discounted business class. Not everyone can purchase their tickets far in advance or have great flexibility in the timing of their flights. And not every company will pay business class or better either but will pay for high end economy class fare when justified by say schedule.

To dismiss all economy class pax as undesirable would be a monumental business mistake.

And there are none in the Pier or any kind of Day Room. Cathay makes it clear with the new The Pier that they are getting rid of the cabanas because they take up too much space and they don't want their pax to use the lounges as pseudo-hotels per a The Pier staff. Once again, I think CX is making a mistake with this decision. While HKG is not DBX or DOH, it is still a hub airport with sufficient amount of traffic around the clock. Even an airport like FRA where there are much less traffic after 10PM understand that business travellers value their nap time and day rooms are a welcome addition. It's perfectly justifiable not wanting to turn lounges into pseudo-hotels, that I can agree with but to eliminate day rooms, no, terrible idea. And you know what happens with these new CX lounges? So some guests instead just commandeered public space, took off their shoes & soxes and turned certain area into their "private beds". It looked absolutely awful and 3rd world like. I saw it last month, it wasn't pretty.

There was a time when U.S. carriers (UA, AA) actually had respectable Int'l First Class not so long ago. Without a doubt, the U.S. has the market for First Class traffic but both airlines, along with DL, have largely moved away from an Int'l First Class strategy and it ain't because the U.S. can't support sufficient First class traffic, not at all. So it begs to ask, if First Class class only needs to marginally better than J, why is that the U.S. carriers can't utilize their home court advantage and maintain their market share of First Class pax to/from the U.S. in the past decade?

I think your sentiment and that of brunos who agreed with you oversimplified the situation. First Class traffic is especially difficult to maintain and very expensive but they are also extremely profitable when done well. The problem with CX's strategy is its internal inconsistency. There are only 6 F seats per CX flight on a B777 - which is consistent with the industry's trend. But by reducing the number of F seats, the logic is maintain a small but exclusive yet demanding audience. Instead, CX has been busy cutting corners here and there, which is detrimental to how the product is perceived by the discerned travellers it supposedly wants to keep when it reduced the number of seats to 6. Simply put, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Airlines like AF has also gone for the exclusive approach by reducing their seats but they focused on upping their offering by bringing back the caviar service and enchanced the La Première lounge in their CDG homebase. Others like BA instead, adopted a competitive pricing model where their F class capacity is higher, allowing BA to compete in the F market with lower prices, whether directly or indirectly. So BA is one of the very few majors who don't have caviar in F but they have been upfront about it with their very attractive prices. CX is acting like AF and BA simultaneously and that is not a good thing - it's unclear whom the CX management think they are targeting, the discerned travellers or those who are willing to pay little more than J or sometimes even less than J to fly F?

I am going to challenge you on that thought, which is a very commonly held perception but I have come to question, with reasons. The conventional logic is that, for example, a business traveller from Europe to Asia/Australia will prefer direct flights instead of making a connection in DXB/DOH. That however has been thoroughly debunked in recent years with the rise of ME3 or even Turkish Airlines for example. ME3 and Turkish have taken away so much premium traffic that the European airlines are under a lot of pressure to compete against them. In fact, it wasn't just the European airlines, even as far back as 2008, Dubai - by extension, the UAE fought a very public battle with Canada over EK's landing rights in Canada. The dispute got so bitter that the UAE retaliated by imposing visas on Canadians, opposed Canada's bid on UN Security Council and tried to remove ICAO from Montreal. Canadian government retorted by inferring the UAE as being a terrorist country. All for what? The Canadian government tried to protect Air Canada from EK's competition. If you look at AC's main routes however, they should have very little competition from EK so why did the two countries go into such bitter battle with each other on AC vs. EK? I don't think you can explain it with the conventional logic. Then lately, the U.S. big 3 carriers are starting to feel the heat from the ME3 and they have been lobbying hard against them. Once again, with such major home court advantage, what do the U.S. carriers have to fear?

Suffice to say, I think both the points you are making and that of percysmith are a little outdated. They may very well be true 10 years ago, but not anymore.