In the same vein, no doubt those who flew in Concorde, expected top glass maintenance & no missing spacers in the LG, no doubt most pax wouldn't expect a European Flag Carrier to sub-contract heavy maintenance to China, & would similarly hope an airline would replace pitot probes found to have poor performance with updated ones PDQ. . . but, in aviation, as in most things in life, our fate is governed by grubby money grabbing individuals whose only interest in the business they participate in, revolves solely around syphoning off as much as possible, whilst paying lip service to customer care/safety.
"Officially" all airlines list their priorities as 1-safety 2 - punctuality 3 - service, in reality, whilst the staff are expected to adhere to this, the ones running the show care only for the bottom line.
This, regretably, is no different in a legacy carrier than it is in a lo-cost carrier, & anyone thinking that flying with a flag carrier is buying them more safety/better maintenance / more highly trained crew, is living in the halcyon days of the past. Everyone, but everyone ,is trying to cheapen everything, which is why Iberia is on strike today, may be a waste of time, but they are , at least, objecting to the march towards "cheap & nasty" championed by the Loco's & adopted by every aviation related accountant.
So, we can blame passengers for wanting cheap flights, but don't we all love a bargain ? or we can blame greedy shareholders for demanding that the accountants push the managers to cut everything to the bone (supposedly, always, to ensure continued survival of the company, in reality, more often to milk it dry) I would tend to swing to the latter, & it is prevalent in every aspect of our lovely modern society, aviation merely being the one we are discussing now.