I've read and I hope this is indeed a once in a century event (Michael Lewis's Premonition, end of chapter 2) and we don't see another similarly disruptive event again.
(Although I don't think this is the last Coronavirus we'll see. Just hope it's not so disruptive)
How do you ramp down and then back up again as severely as airlines did in the past three years?

I like to think some airlines can endure this better than most - ME3 has laxer labour laws and higher catchment for staff. A bit like cruise lines.

Still they're probably not immune to shortage with local handling - QR and EK is no more immune on lost bags at Australian and UK airports than QF and BA.

Maybe we all need to move towards easyJet/UO/LCCs - less staff, easier to ramp up or down?

I continue to fly Cathay for personal reasons but I am far from typical. One family I know well in Manila consists of 7 adults. They fly between Manila and New York several times a year, almost always in business. They used to always fly with Cathay but due to the deteriorating offering have switched their allegiance to JAL. Cathay's accountants, like most in the profession can calculate cost incurred to the nearest cent but when it comes to calculating the income that is being foregone by penny pinching they are totally lost. This is not a problem while flights are full but when things revert to normal they will lose seriously. Regrettably based on passed behaviour this will then result in a further round of cost cutting, i.e. service reduction. And all the while they dream of being a lifestyle brand.

Grass is greener on the other side Removal of caviar in JAL First Class

So is JAL New status programme (launching in January 2024)

I live here. It's the most convenient O/D carrier.

I won't recommend anyone to make CX a "destination" carrier, or take a detour, just to experience CX service. Not currently, anyway.

The same accounting geniuses who blew billions on idiotic fuel hedging in the mid 2010s!

I agree, but I think all these "small things" added up together will have an impact in the long run. For example, Greater Bay Airlines with its 100+ routes and 18 planes coming in, plus the fact that HK travelers are a lot more open to different airlines now, plus the cost cutting, plus the loss of a destination carrier status, and so on... put together will have a material impact on CX.

Please don't blame the accountants, we hate hedge accounting (CX or any other co). The decision to do any "hedging" is always taken by the "business".

Specifically on this, I noted when I flew CX a few days ago (perhaps eff. 01JUL?), the name tag of FA was changed, and Mandarin is now 普通話, not 國語 anymore. I believe this change was probably made in response to recent political climate and the "carpet" incident. Otherwise, no, I think CX is still the old CX.

I'm a 2m miler on a CX, and I much prefer to fly SQ or QR these days.
CX still wins on lounges, but that's about it.

They had an almost uniquely bad Covid, due to reasons largely outside of their control.

CX post-pandemic has been quite hit or miss for me, more so than before, so I'm not sure I can say they're just like a Mainland carrier. However, in my limited experience "Mainland-carrier level of service" is vastly superior to anything based in North America, so it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Agreed. Depending on the destination, I'm pretty impartial now on whether to fly CX or the "home" destination (e.g. ANA for Japan, EVA for Taiwan, etc).

Sums up all of HK.

As a relatively infrequent CX flyer with fond memories of J trips pre COVID and Pier F etc I was a little apprehensive about a number of trips we have as part of our current vacation. In actual fact had a fantastic crew on a flight from KIX to HKG recently - attentive towards the kids, friendly, frequently checking whether we wanted additional drinks and a great hard product on the A350 for a short business flight.

Maybe having low expectations helped, maybe we were lucky - we have 3 more flights in the next 10 days to assess - but so far, so good

Now if Pier F opens in the next week that really would be the icing on the cake�

Have to say its never going to be as good as pre covid. The staff are tired, unhappy and feel abused. The management are living in cloud cuckoo land and dare not put a foot wrong in fear of loosing their jobs. The people in their ivory towers have no idea what is going on at street level because they simply dont feel the need to . The first big drop came, when Steve Miller left to set up Oasis and took a huge number of fantastic staff with him. That was in 2008. By the time Oasis went bust and CX had now started the Mongkok shop girl recruitment programme, it was already starting to show cracks. Then Linda Sim who was head of MPC left, the signs were there of what was really going on at CX. Slowly but surely, nepotism was spreading like wild fire behind the scenes and then the fuel hedging disaster happened and of course no one was to blame for it. This is becasue, we are all family and we will just make the passengers pay. A period of product erosion continued until COVID came and kicked CX right between the legs. I honestly thought the Chinese Government would have squeezed them so hard, they would buckle and become a regional airline under Chinese ownership while the new Greater Bay Airlines stepped in and suddenly acquired a ready to go fleet of planes. When you look at what was happening in the cargo division and the huge number of foreign pilots that left, due to being forced to do crazy quarantine and extra vaccines, it was just a matter of time before the passenger pilots all walked. 650 of them I was told at the time cargo flights were simply not enough to cope with demand. Somehow CX is still flying and obviously using a lot of BS and mirrors to lure passengers back, but its never going to anythng like it was in every aspect of being a customer and enjoying great service.

I totally different view from my own .
The above conclusions re the quality of service etc not supported by recent revues.
So many unfounded and sweeping conclusions above that are not at all supported by fact.
The 650 pilots to which you refer did not walk they were laid-off by the airline due to the pandemic ( as were many hundreds from most major airlines)
The remarks made re the cargo division are a figment of the writers rather vivid imagination as there has never been any shortage of cargo captains most of whom are still 'foreign' ,very few left the airline other than to retire and full service was maintained at both Cathay and Air Hong Kong. Several long serving freighter pilots are family friends and so I know the above as fact.
Of course Air China has owned 28% of Cathay for many years and Cathay has owned a similar share of Government owned Air China and they a few years back both invested in a new cargo airline. It seems no friction there
BTW the GBA 'ready to go fleet to which you refer consists now of 2 aircraft, but the fleet has doubled in size previously it was just the one!

That is true.
People are disingenuous to think CX2023 is the same CX2003 when they were still truely operated by Swire. It's operated by people who are not out of box thinkers but merely followers (not even first followers...). Management don't care nor protect the staff, and you can see if from staff retention and how staff cares about customers. It is even worse that they put their attention in 1 kind of eggs, ignoring their former loyal customers of decades.
In short, a crisis in making. However, this is not the first in the airline industry nor the last. CX is far from the worst airlines around, but is no longer anywhere close to high up anymore.

Honestly, post-pandemic, we should lower our expectations and expect CX to act more like a commodity.
No need for fancy cabins or USP products - leave ME3/SQ/TK to do that.
Just get us from AAA-BBB (or XXX-AAA-BBB) as efficiently as can be, without making us absorb costs from "mistakes".

Looks to me, like you are describing how things "work" (ehhhhh, not work) in an authoritarian regime......