I concur that the worst time to be in the lounge is between 9.30pm - 11pm, where there is pretty much no available seating. However, after 11pm, the crowd numbers start to dwindle quite significantly (although there was still a 45 minute queue for a shower). I was tempted to head across to the T2 lounge, which I was told was nearly empty at that time of night.

There are unfortunately some tiny cuts to the product onboard as well, which led me to think there may be a few possibilities explaining the lack of willingness to invest in the product:

• They may think a very bad recession is about to be upon us, which will impact their balance sheet,
• Debts and bond issuances during COVID starting to become due,
• Their experience during the COVID years, in which their market pretty much evaporated overnight, may have caused some jitters and may explain why they prefer to play it safe rather than make any big dollar investments in improving their product, or
• They have just decided to go slightly downmarket and chase volume instead (you may argue that their airfares are telling a different story but that's the case with every airline at the moment).