Cathay Pacific sacks flight attendants accused of ridiculing non-English-speaking passengers

Hong Kong’s home carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has apologized and fired three cabin crew members over a viral complaint accusing them of discriminating against customers who didn’t speak English on a recent flight from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu to Hong Kong, which has long been a popular destination for tourists from mainland China.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Cathay Pacific CEO Ronald Lam Siu-por (林邵波 Lín Shàobō) addressed the incident and announced that the accused flight attendants would no longer serve customers. The decision was made after the company conducted an internal investigation into the allegation, Lam wrote, adding that he would spearhead a cross-departmental special task force to carry out a comprehensive review to ensure that similar offenses will not occur again.

“I would like to reiterate that Cathay Pacific adopts a zero-tolerance attitude towards any serious violations of the company’s policies and code of conduct,” Lam wrote. He also emphasized that the company is committed to making sure that passengers from different backgrounds and cultures feel respected and receive equally professional service by its employees.

“On behalf of Cathay Pacific, I want to offer my sincere apology again to the affected passengers and the public,” he said.

Lam’s statement was the third response issued by the Hong Kong-based airline in the course of 48 hours. Embroiled in a PR crisis that required emergency damage-control measures, the company posted an initial apology on Weibo Monday, saying it was “aware of the unpleasant experience” on Flight 987. On Tuesday morning, it followed up with another post, in which it said that the accused workers had been suspended from their duties and results of an internal investigation would be released within three days.

The situation was brought to light on Monday when an anonymous passenger who flew with the airline over the weekend took to social media to air their grievances. In a post on Chinese social and ecommerce app Xiaohongshu, the person, who described themselves as a mainlander who has lived in Hong Kong for 11 years, alleged that because their seat was close to the crew rest area, they overheard flight attendants’ “endless complaints and disrespectful comments throughout the entire two-hour flight” about some passengers’ inability to speak English or Cantonese, the primary language used in Hong Kong.

The enraged customer recalled that when a fellow passenger asked questions about her traveler entry form in not-so-perfect English, a flight attendant responded impatiently. In another instance described by the person, when an older man got up to use the bathroom while the seat belt sign was on, a flight attendant used the aircraft’s loud speaker to call him out in Cantonese, before saying to her coworkers in private that “they don’t understand human language.”

In an audio recording accompanying the post, a flight attendant could be heard mocking passengers’ English ability when they confused carpets with blankets. “If you cannot say ‘blanket,’ you cannot have it,” the flight attendant told other crew members, who responded with muted giggles. “Carpet is on the floor,” she went on to say.

“I really don’t understand why there is so much malice toward passengers who don’t speak English or Cantonese,” the Xiaohongshu user wrote. “In order to properly document this incident, I told the head flight attendant about my experience before I got off the plane and said I would file a formal complaint afterwards.”

The post quickly went viral and sparked outrage on Chinese social media. On Weibo, several hashtags inspired by the news have been trending in the past two days, which collectively have garnered over 100 million views. While some criticized Cathay Pacific for not training its employees properly, others applauded the airline for taking immediate action to address the complaint and punish the flight attendants.

Many internet users noted that the episode was a stark example of the discrimination and snobbery mainlanders face when traveling in Hong Kong nowadays. Before the pandemic and the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations, mainlanders were the main driver of Hong Kong’s tourism and local economy. In 2018, the city — which has been a special administrative region of China after it was handed over by Britain in 1997 — attracted a record 65.1 million visitors, with nearly four in five coming from mainland China.

To lure back tourists and revitalize its tourism sector following three years of pandemic isolation, Hong Kong’s government launched a global promotional campaign called “Hello Hong Kong” in February, which consisted of giving away 500,000 free airline tickets both to locals eager for an overseas vacation and international travelers keen to visit Hong Kong.

As a participant in the initiative, Cathay Pacific issued its tickets earlier this month and they were all snapped up in two and a half hours, a representative from the airline told CNN. “As the home carrier of Hong Kong, we are excited to be supporting this campaign to welcome visitors from around the globe to discover the beauty of our beloved home city,” the representative said.

But as a growing number of mainlanders took advantage of Hong Kong’s reopening of borders, old tensions have flared up. The public response to the return of budget mainland tour groups has been less welcoming, even downright rude, as reported by the New York Times. On Chinese social media, a swarm of videos depicting alleged mistreatment by Hong Kong locals have emerged, including one that went viral on Douyin in February, where an influencer from the mainland captured multiple moments of those working in Hong Kong’s service industry rolling their eyes at her when she spoke Mandarin to them.