Recent AirNZ experience
Recently flew from London to Vancouver and Hong Kong to London with BA. The food was pretty much unedible, with the bun being as hard as a cricket ball and the rest of the meal looking very close to its best before date. The service wasn't much better with no real customer service or smiles from the cabin crew, they looked totally disinterested.
On the other hand my legs from Vancouver to Auckland and Auckland to Hong Kong with AirNZ were superb, better planes with better inflight entertainment, the food was great for airline food, and of course AirNZ cabin crew are always helpful. It's become noticable these days that the gap between the top airlines and the rest is widening and speaking with friends and colleagues they are willing to pay more to fly with the likes of AirNZ.
Also to top things off, I had a family emergency and needed to change my return London flights hours before taking off, jumped on the phone to AirNZ and was speaking to customer service within minutes who were sympathetic and were able to change my flight with no worries at all. I remember years ago at midnight getting an email from Jetstar saying my 6am flight was cancelled. This took hours to get sorted out through their crap customer service. You have to praise AirNZ and the extra mile they go to keep their customers happy.