Thanks for comments.

Certainly on India routes, there's been PEY whenever I've flown BOM (but perhaps because I always get the later flight in & later flight out?). But for MAA it seems to be a bit random. Sometimes pretty much every flight has it, other times only a few days a week.

Thing is I really dislike the 10-across in normal Y in CX and that's for daytime shorter routes - never mind .8 hours overnight . So it looks like I will have to consider other carriers; unless I can wangle J without needing to drop by fee rate.

But the other thing I recall (once again, going back a decade) is that CX always used to be markedly more expensive than EK. Some quick price checks now seem to suggest CX is actually a bit cheaper - so from one extreme to the other (then again, maybe just a bit cheaper on the dates I was comparing, I suppose)