I flew 240000 miles on CI last year and a whole load more on other airlines. I simply refuse to get on the dirty,tatty worn out planes that most US airlines use and knowing people who work for both UA and Delta on maintainance they both speak very highly of the service levels at CI.
For service the walk all over any european or US airline and having flown both CI and MH in 1st and biz - A LOT - I can say MH are not as consistant as CI, but what do I know ?
To say MH have better planes than CI is BS, CI have the youngest fleet of 747's in the world and I reckon if they actually got round to wasjhing a MH plane they would save a fortune in fuel alone