AMuch easier said than done in reality. I called a friend at CX just to verify this...apparently half the fleet was delayed or out of position the last 72 hours.

In practice, CX uses almost all their longhaul fleet on shorthauls during the day. It's the only way they can provide the capacity. Us speculating here about their fleet management during irrops is...rather irrelevant. They know what they're doing.

Your point about assume they're lying is definitely correct. But the last few days have been a serious operational event regardless if it makes front page news, it seems they've handled it well. Runways were operating at half capacity (240 second intervals) for part of the day, ground staff was prevented from servicing planes on many occasions due to weather (including my own, incidentally a long haul bird servicing a short haul route, leading to the 2+ hour delay of the following JFK flight), etc. Incidentally, after I posted above, we finally got a gate after 20 minutes parked on the tarmac. But when we got to our gate, there were no attendants available to bring the jetbridge to us. We had another 15 minute delay parked at the gate but without the jetbridge attached.

I'm just grateful we werent diverted. Tons of circling. We had three separate holds before being cleared.