Originally Posted by HarbourGent

I don't know what their goals were. It may be that a couple of goals were achieved:

- reducing the cost of low yield high status members e.g. stopping access to CX lounges when flying on non-One World carriers, and
- getting a bit of extra loyalty from some higher status passengers, by introducing mid-tier upgrades. I don't know how widespread this is, but one reads at least some stories here on FT and in personal experience of flying CX to make a mid-tier level.
Both seem rather minor to me. The goal of retaining and perhaps growing loyalty (maybe at lower cost to the company) must have been the much bigger one and on this I think the changes have probably been a disaster for CX. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence on FT from heavyweight customers such as QRC3288, and I have seen some in my social group, that:
- the changes were seen as a slap in the face and caused a lot of people to shift from a sense of loyalty to Cathay to regarding Cathay more like a preferred dance partner. You feel you ought to dance with her, but she's not your wife (or even your mistress).
- Spend has shifted in line with perceived programme benefits. Specific examples (contra the above) include people shifting spend to other airlines as soon as status is achieved.
- Most importantly I suspect, passengers have seriously tried other airlines by choice which has caused them to reconsider CX's value proposition for the first time and find it lacking. There are a load of threads here, and I have done the same myself, where high status loyalists have said that the changes more or less directly led them to start putting serious money the way of EK/SQ/BR (like the poster) and so on.
My hunch is that in that sense, by forcing away a lot of profitable business and decision influencers, the changes have been a disaster for CX though the full extent will only be clear over five or ten years.
CX's strategy was to squeeze its loyalists and people it thought of as hub captives as hard as possible, and the MPC changes reflected that but were only one manifestation of it - everything from seat reconfiguration to HK vs. China pricing took the same line. The loyalists turned out to have finite loyalty when put upon, and even passengers previously seen as hub captives have in some cases decided that they aren't hub captives in fact, with a stop on BR or EK etc. not the end of the world.
The strategy reflects the airline's dire management thinking in recent years - this year's events have compounded that as a woe, but it was longstanding in any case. Sadly I think the MPC changes were just one indicative chapter in CX's long-term decline as an independent airline, which is reversible but I think not with the current strategy.