Thanks for this.

Yes, the frequency would mean less need to stay overnight at HKG. I'm sure with hotel prices in Hong Kong, it would make sense for them too.

I suppose a first leg delay resulting in a connection being missed happens more to short hauls connecting to long hauls. This would happen a lot to mainland flights due to ATC. I wonder if affected passengers are statistically more low maintenance than those from more worldly places.

In IRROPS, CX seems to me to be acting rather passive. I would have liked it if there's more clear guidelines for passengers and staff alike to refer to when necessary.

I don't know if status flyers are treated differently in this case. I'm CX Gold. From my limited experience, they would not have done anything had I not asked, nor would they likely make an effort to hide their "I'm bothered" face when handling it. To be honest, I've grown to be ambivalent about this, (I can imagine being told off at flyertalk-like places that delays due to ATC or operational reasons causing a missed connection does not render CX liable...) and have been getting more experienced with buying and claiming from insurances as a work around to put things in my control.

If one try to reason a bit, is it truly out of line to have any expectations from the airline?

I understand similar issues have been raised. I just think a guideline really would not hurt.

Or, if the current guideline is that CX WILL NOT do STPC for passengers under any circumstances, having that put somewhere on the site would not hurt this case either.