Well, if CX is good here, bad there, so-so another place, that's damnation enough for an airline of their lofty status to merit a comment. Which is all I meant to do.

UAE/Emirates no doubt deserves bashing, bad on them for such a poor transit desk. But at least BA somehow had gotten a big sign up over one of the windows, and iirc other airlines had as well. Although perhaps no one ever transits to CX there, having a staffer (or a native with a CX armband) in the area of the transit desk during a period they had a couple of departures would have been the least I would have expected.

Similarly, with a flight almost an hour late inbound to BKK, there was no excuse not to make an attempt to look after their pax. Even third-world carriers like AA often make a strong attempt at sorting things out.

Nor should it have been a secret that Thai handles them in BKK.

One of three bags failed to be picked up and put on Cathay out of DXB during the transit. Thai handled the repatriation in a friendly but somewhat helpless fashion, more than willing to tell us where in the world the bag had gotten to (London, at the farthest) but apparently powerless to do anything about it. And for whatever reason, Cathay apparently was not interested in posting the bag on any carrier but themselves - it eventually arrived on their 4x-weekly service through BOM, though obviously Thai themselves flies the route non-stop regularly. And CX so far has ignored my emailed inquiry.

They're still likely to maintain their crown as the best carrier overall, and they'll still find my butt happily in their seats, but as a poster mentioned, one could imagine that we'll have too many opportunities to reminisce about "the way they used to be."