I've had five sets of visitors to the Sandpit over the last few months. Sadly, not one of them had a good thing to say about their travel experience with EK. I encouraged all of them to write letters of complaint. Those that did got the standard form letter full of platitudes in reply.
It pains me to say it, but if you were able to break out three EK passengers from a time bubble of around 1994, one from each class, and put them onto the bucketshop operation we've become today, they wouldn't believe it was the same airline.
We all love to lambast journalists, but in this case, I'd say the lady is absolutely on target with every criticism she's made. Someone very close to the top in EK quite obviously made a decision four or more years ago that maximizing profit at all costs was to override quality of presentation and service. Judging by the airline's always in the black bottom line over the last few years, the beancounters would say it was a very good decision.
However, I think it would be a safe bet to say that EK has suffered enormous intangible losses in non returning customers and not gaining many, many potential new customers because of (in some cases quite vociferous) negative word of mouth from dissatisfied customers.
One pair of my visitors this year are Skywards Premium members who travel Business Class, usually at least twice a year between Europe and Australia. They told me they'll be trying Etihad next time they travel because friends with similar travel habits say it's streets above EK in all regards. Their comment was "They wouldn't have to try too hard".