Originally Posted by
Arbeysix
The reality is that CX has historically been slower to update its fleet and hard product than a lot of its comparators. The current situation is a continuation of that, exacerbated by the pandemic no doubt, among other factors. It is interesting to see the quote from GV that CX aspires to be the “world’s best premium airline”.
For me as an outport based pax, I’ve always been willing to look past deficiencies in the hard product from time to time, to the other benefits associated with loyalty to CX. These include safety (which I never take for granted), all-round treatment as DM and associated benefits, relative pricing, network and schedule, relative quality of digital platform etc.
In the context of competitors improving in all of the above areas, it’s sad to say that I can’t recall a time when there’s been quite the gap between aspiration and reality that we see at the moment. Clearly there are plans for improvement but as other have noted, the change will be very slow in coming.
As far as Longhaul is concerned, I strongly disagree with you first statement.
CX has long been my favorite longhaul airline (with SQ) well before I was based in Hong Kong 20 years ago. Its F and J products were at the forefront. CX could afford to sell tickets at a higher price. It is only in the past 8 years or so, that numerous other airlines have started to catch up or better. And CX had to face very strong headwinds with the impact of the protests and covid . The integration of KA and UO on the regional front, its financial distress, the 777X drama have been hard.
On the hard product, there has been some poor decisions such as the Aria suite which I find very disappointing. The A321 configuration is a catastrophe. Hopefully, they now have the resources to retrofit and make more consistent their regional fleet. But that will be expensive and take a long time.
I understand that many posters in this forum are HK-based with high status. But a lot of the regional J traffic is provided by pax who transit in HKG from Europe and Americas. Even leisure pax have upgraded to J following covid, despite the global fare increases. But I heard so many pax disappointed by their Asian CX (or even UO) regional connection, while QR, EK or even SQ offer a consistent product throughout. QR have been able to raise their premium cabin fares markedly since covid, while CX cannot.
Unfortunately, I cannot disagree with your last paragraph.