Saying that CX partner award existence is correlated with both good times and bad times for their profits does not imply the awards are a causation of the same. It's offered as a rebuttal to "CX F is worse these days because people can actually get partner awards".

IAG (BA's owners) are consistently profitable.

https://news.sky.com/story/iag-profi...n-may-10964858

BA also has reasonable award availability to partners, and has made recent hard product investments in F.

SQ had problems with profits over that time frame.

https://news.sky.com/story/iag-profi...n-may-10964858

SQ is notorious for rotten partner availability. They also regularly do hard product investments in F.

My argument is that it's far more likely service cutbacks in any class of service have to do with things that have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you can spend 70,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles to fly in Cathay Pacific first class. Such as Cathay consistently losing money on fuel hedges (and having to make it up elsewhere), and the competitive environment they fly in.