Despite the 'welcome' being forced, I think we all agree that the CX welcome works (and that's also forced) so I personally don't have a problem with it.

My personal experience is that the 'welcome' tends to happen about 50% of the time. When they do ask however I do generally get a glass of champers or the like and that's always welcome when your sitting down the back.

I totally agree that QF really need to do something about their meal service though. Whilst I have no problems with any of the food given to me to date (generally it's higher quality than the stuff I get on most other carriers bar CX), the length of time it takes the QF staff to serve it really blows. Even the Thai staff who generally are pretty efficient are slow which makes me suspect it's their work practices rather than staff taking it easy.

Don't forget that the domestic trolley dollies happily serve meals quickly on short domestic services. @:-) Maybe the long haul crews need alternate onto domestic services so they can learn how their short haul colleagues do a quick meal service?