A Cathay Pacific Airways plane. File photo: IC

Cathay Pacific Airways, a Hong Kong-based airline, apologized for a third time on Tuesday evening and dismissed three flight attendants following two apology statements released on Tuesday morning and Monday evening, after a passenger complained that cabin crew kept using discriminatory words against non-English-speaking passengers during a flight. 

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said on Wednesday that he has proposed to Cathay Pacific Chief Executive that the incident is a serious matter and similar incidents will not be allowed to happen again. "Their words and deeds hurt the feelings between people in Hong Kong and in the mainland and undermined Hong Kong's culture and values of respect and courtesy," Lee said.

"I am very upset about the inappropriate comments of some Cathay Pacific crew members. The incident is a serious breach of Hong Kong's hospitality, values and ethical standards", said Lam Sai-hung, the HKSAR Secretary for Transport and Logistics on Tuesday 

Lam said he has expressed great concern to Cathay Pacific and asked the management to improve service levels immediately. "I hope Cathay Pacific can finish its comprehensive review as soon as possible to make fundamental improvement in the company's institution and staff attitudes so as not to fail Hong Kong's reputation as an international aviation hub and hospitality place," Lam said.

"I would like to reiterate that Cathay Pacific Airways has a zero-tolerance attitude toward serious breaches of our rules, regulations, and code of ethics by individual employees," the chief executive of the airline said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

To prevent similar incidents from happening again, he will personally lead an inter-departmental working group to conduct a comprehensive review, re-examine service processes, personnel training and related systems, and further enhance the quality of service of the company. The most important of these is to ensure that all staff members are respectful of visitors from different backgrounds and cultures and provide professional and consistent service in all areas, he said.

Netizens said it's not the first time such discrimination had been identified, and they asked Cathay Pacific to thoroughly address the problem.

"We solemnly apologize again for the passenger's experience on the fight CX987 on Sunday, which has aroused widespread public attention. We have conducted internal investigation and will release the result within three days," Cathay Pacific said on Tuesday.

The airline vowed serious punishment to any words and deeds against airline regulations or professional ethics once they were confirmed. It also promised to reflect its shortcomings to improve service quality.

The second apology followed the first one released on Monday evening when Cathay Pacific said it was deeply sorry and is taking the incident very seriously and has already contacted the passenger

On Sunday, a netizen posted his complain to Cathay Pacific on Chinese social media and e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), saying she has heard cabin crew's kept grumbling in English and Cantonese against passengers who are not native speakers of the languages while taking the flight CX987 from Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province to Hong Kong on Sunday.

"If you cannot say blanket, you cannot have it," "Carpet is on the floor," are female voices heard on a sound recording released by the netizen. The netizen said she guessed the crew were laughing at passengers who tried to use the English words they know to ask for blankets from the flight attendant who can only speak English.

According to the netizen, an air hostess told her colleague "They don't understand human language" after reminding an old man via broadcast in Cantonese, who took a child to toilet just after the plane took off, to return to their seats until the safety light put off.

Another passenger has also received very impatient reply from the crew when trying to ask in English about how to fill in the arrival card, said the netizen.

"I really don't understand why these crew have no basic respect to passengers, and I hope Cathay Pacific can enhance their crew training,"? the netizen said.

Hashtags related to the discrimination, especially the sound recording of the crew's discriminatory words, had received more than 70 million views and comments as of 12 pm on Tuesday on China's Twitter-like social media platform Sina Weibo, where more netizens shared similar experience of being discriminated by Cathay Pacific cabin crew. Some said the crew wouldn't respond at all if speaking to them in Putonghua.

Netizens said that providing services in multiple languages to passengers is the practice and service standard of airline, and Cathay Pacific is obliged to provide service in Putonghua, as the flight route involved was between Chengdu and Hong Kong.

Some observers suggested passengers in the Chinese mainland only speak Putonghua when flying Cathay Pacific to help the company speed up equipping crew capable of speaking Putonghua.

"We can see from the crew's response that they could obviously understand what the passengers want but pretended not to. This is not about the crew's language ability, but a problem of their service attitude and professional ethics," one netizen commented.

Some Cathay Pacific employees behaved very poorly during the 2019 riots in Hong Kong, the airline shouldn't allow questionable values in their employees to emerge in customer service, commented another netizen.

In August 2019, China's aviation authority issued a major air safety warning to Cathay Pacific after the airline was criticized for its tacit support of anti-government riots that may expose passengers to safety threats.


Cathay Pacific Airways, a Hong Kong-based airline, apologized for a third time on Tuesday evening and dismissed three flight attendants following two apology statements released on Tuesday morning and Monday evening, after a passenger complained that cabin crew kept using discriminatory words against non-English-speaking passengers during a flight. 

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said on Wednesday that he has proposed to Cathay Pacific Chief Executive that the incident is a serious matter and similar incidents will not be allowed to happen again. "Their words and deeds hurt the feelings between people in Hong Kong and in the mainland and undermined Hong Kong's culture and values of respect and courtesy," Li said.

"I am very upset about the inappropriate comments of some Cathay Pacific crew members. The incident is a serious breach of Hong Kong's hospitality, values and ethical standards", said Lam Sai-hung, the HKSAR Secretary for Transport and Logistics on Tuesday 

Lam said he has expressed great concern to Cathay Pacific and asked the management to improve service levels immediately. "I hope Cathay Pacific can finish its comprehensive review as soon as possible to make fundamental improvement in the company's institution and staff attitudes so as not to fail Hong Kong's reputation as an international aviation hub and hospitality place," Lam said.

"I would like to reiterate that Cathay Pacific Airways has a zero-tolerance attitude toward serious breaches of our rules, regulations, and code of ethics by individual employees," the chief executive of the airline said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

To prevent similar incidents from happening again, he will personally lead an inter-departmental working group to conduct a comprehensive review, re-examine service processes, personnel training and related systems, and further enhance the quality of service of the company. The most important of these is to ensure that all staff members are respectful of visitors from different backgrounds and cultures and provide professional and consistent service in all areas, he said.

Netizens said it's not the first time such discrimination had been identified, and they asked Cathay Pacific to thoroughly address the problem.

"We solemnly apologize again for the passenger's experience on the fight CX987 on Sunday, which has aroused widespread public attention. We have conducted internal investigation and will release the result within three days," Cathay Pacific said on Tuesday.

The airline vowed serious punishment to any words and deeds against airline regulations or professional ethics once they were confirmed. It also promised to reflect its shortcomings to improve service quality.

The second apology followed the first one released on Monday evening when Cathay Pacific said it was deeply sorry and is taking the incident very seriously and has already contacted the passenger

On Sunday, a netizen posted his complain to Cathay Pacific on Chinese social media and e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), saying she has heard cabin crew's kept grumbling in English and Cantonese against passengers who are not native speakers of the languages while taking the flight CX987 from Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province to Hong Kong on Sunday.

"If you cannot say blanket, you cannot have it," "Carpet is on the floor," are female voices heard on a sound recording released by the netizen. The netizen said she guessed the crew were laughing at passengers who tried to use the English words they know to ask for blankets from the flight attendant who can only speak English.

According to the netizen, an air hostess told her colleague "They don't understand human language" after reminding an old man via broadcast in Cantonese, who took a child to toilet just after the plane took off, to return to their seats until the safety light put off.

Another passenger has also received very impatient reply from the crew when trying to ask in English about how to fill in the arrival card, said the netizen.

"I really don't understand why these crew have no basic respect to passengers, and I hope Cathay Pacific can enhance their crew training,"? the netizen said.

Hashtags related to the discrimination, especially the sound recording of the crew's discriminatory words, had received more than 70 million views and comments as of 12 pm on Tuesday on China's Twitter-like social media platform Sina Weibo, where more netizens shared similar experience of being discriminated by Cathay Pacific cabin crew. Some said the crew wouldn't respond at all if speaking to them in Putonghua.

Netizens said that providing services in multiple languages to passengers is the practice and service standard of airline, and Cathay Pacific is obliged to provide service in Putonghua, as the flight route involved was between Chengdu and Hong Kong.

Some observers suggested passengers in the Chinese mainland only speak Putonghua when flying Cathay Pacific to help the company speed up equipping crew capable of speaking Putonghua.

"We can see from the crew's response that they could obviously understand what the passengers want but pretended not to. This is not about the crew's language ability, but a problem of their service attitude and professional ethics," one netizen commented.

Some Cathay Pacific employees behaved very poorly during the 2019 riots in Hong Kong, the airline shouldn't allow questionable values in their employees to emerge in customer service, commented another netizen.

In August 2019, China's aviation authority issued a major air safety warning to Cathay Pacific after the airline was criticized for its tacit support of anti-government riots that may expose passengers to safety threats.