Thanks for these excellent points.
All media people have their own agenda. Mainstream media needs to get more eyeballs (as it were) and social media (and the often annoying bloggers who feed off each other and everything else) need many clicks to justify receiving ad support and payment from their partners. On a good day, it's a nasty game.
It seems there are executives and managers at a number of airlines who have immense dislike for FT, likely due to that cohort on all forums who are ranting complainers. It is unfortunate that these execs cannot see the positive posts and more importantly, the actual value FT members provide to each other that is beneficial in many ways to the airlines.
Many of us reading this CX story are a bit sad for CX, especially as CX always had a reputation for excellent service, food, crews, cabins etc..
I would like to believe that CX corporate can sort out whatever mess they have to deal with. Putting aside the SCMP article, if customers are starting to notice these changes, they are not all imaginary.
Compare CX to AC on this issue. When threads were started, AC execs who used to participate on FT asked for photos and aircraft flights and registration #s so that the birds could be cleaned. Well, that effort lasted 15 minutes and now we are all bringing our own packages of wipes, Purell, etc. Some have given up on the concept of a clean lav on a 16 hour flight, let alone clean pods in J.
Just a sampling on AC FT:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...-aircraft.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...ndards-ac.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...g-cleaner.html