CATHAY SCRAMBLES TO CONTAIN FALLOUT FROM INSULT SCANDAL
CEO apologises in Mandarin as flight attendants’ union hits back and John Lee demands answers
Cathay Pacific is scrambling to defuse a deepening scandal over the flagship carrier’s cabin crew insulting mainland passengers, with an angry Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu demanding answers while the flight attendants’ union hit back about sinking morale and the threat of unfair scrutiny.
Cathay CEO Ronald Lam Siu-por yesterday apologised in Mandarin to affected passengers and the public, the company’s fourth apology in three days, soon after a visibly upset city leader expressed outrage over the incident as he revealed he had personally instructed the airline’s management to review its staff training and improve its customer service culture.
“These disrespectful words and deeds have hurt the feelings of compatriots in Hong Kong and the mainland, and also undermined the city’s existing culture and values of respect, courtesy and inclusiveness,” Lee said at the opening ceremony of the Guangdong-Hong Kong Cooperation Week in Guangzhou.
“I am outraged and disappointed by the fact these bad deeds happened on a Hong Kong flight.”
Lee said he had pointed out to Lam the seriousness of the incident, which had damaged Hong Kong’s image.
Lam pledged to lead a cross-departmental task force to improve the company’s culture of “customers first” and ensure service was carried out with politeness and dignity.
“We will learn a lesson from this incident and will explain it internally to our employees,” he said.
“We also hope that employees can make their contribution in this difficult time.”
Cathay on Tuesday night announced it had fired three flight attendants who were accused by a Mandarin-speaking passenger of making fun of customers’ English-language abilities on a flight from Chengdu in Sichuan province to Hong Kong on Sunday.
In an online post, the passenger quoted them as saying: “If you cannot say ‘blanket’, you cannot have it.”
In a strongly worded statement issued yesterday, Cathay Pacific’s cabin crew union said management had no intention of returning flight staffing levels to pre-pandemic levels despite an increase in the number of passengers.
“We are facing a shortage of both manpower and resources, a significant increase in workload and low salaries. The company ignores these problems, as a result the morale of colleagues is extremely low, and complaints regarding cabin service have arisen,” the Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants’ Union said.
“Nothing comes from nothing. The union urges the company to address the problem at its cause, rebuild a reasonable and safe work environment and hence improve employee morale.”
The union said it was aware of an online appeal for passengers to “provoke and record the behaviour of crew members”, which it said would seriously disturb their work.
“Crew members are currently under huge pressure and extreme fear,” it said and called on management to provide clear guidelines on how crew members should protect themselves from “unreasonable interference”.
In a separate email to its members, the union said it was distressing to see they were being “falsely accused” of many different things.
Some mainlanders have vowed to film Cathay crew and make public any discriminatory behaviour. They also posted comments on the mainland social media accounts belonging to the city’s senior officials, urging them to tackle what they called the airline’s faults and Hongkongers’ deep-seated biases.
The union said it noted that according to the manual for cabin crew members, employees who witnessed a passenger photographing or filming others without their consent during a flight should ask that the recording be deleted.
This is not the first time Cathay has come under fire from mainlanders. In 2019, mainland media reported that airline staff members had joined the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. The carrier threatened to sack employees who took part in the rallies after China’s civil aviation regulator warned they would be barred from flights to and from the mainland.
A commentary published by Xinhua on Tuesday night ahead of Lam’s apology said the incident had reminded some internet users of their similar unpleasant experiences with Cathay.
“According to the internet users’ comments, Cathay Pacific could be regarded as a repeat offender,” it said. “Is an apology sufficient for a corporation that is incorrigible?”
It warned it might not “fly far” if it failed to tackle its corporate culture as customers will “vote with their feet”.
Earlier on Tuesday, a Weibo account belonging to the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, called on the airline to carry out a “rectification” and establish rules to ensure staff did not mistreat customers.
I am outraged and disappointed by the fact these bad deeds happened on a Hong Kong flight
CHIEF EXECUTIVE JOHN LEE
As flight attendants, we should treat guests with hospitality and professionalism
FLIGHT ATTENDANT CARMEN*
If mainlanders have a bad impression about Hong Kong, it will be a blow to … recovery
PERRY YIU, LAWMAKER REPRESENTING THE TOURISM SECTOR
Staff at Hong Kong’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific keep hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The airline has been embroiled in a widening scandal as its crew were caught openly humiliating mainland passengers. Its pilots were also accused of deliberately slowing down while taxiing planes. In the first of a series, Cannix Yau, Jess Ma and Oscar Liu report on the crisis.
Hong Kong’s beleaguered airline Cathay Pacific must engage in serious soul-searching on the real cause of a snowballing insult debacle or risk ruining the city’s tourism reputation, insiders and critics warned yesterday.
Whether it was low staff morale, insufficient training or grievances about drastic pay cuts, it needed to dig deep and resolve deep-seated issues or it could not be sure of causing yet another scandal, they said, pointing to a host of possible trigger points for the atrociously rude service at the heart of the deepening crisis.
The advice came from independent analysts and employees of the flagship carrier as it summarily sacked three cabin crew members a day earlier after complaints emerged of the staff insulting and discriminating against non-English speakers.
The scandal had rapidly morphed into a political storm exposing the fissures between Hong Kong and the mainland, tensions that had long simmered below the surface, observers said.
The insult fiasco has now taken a new twist as mainlanders launched a vehement online attack on the airline, unleashing a barrage of criticism and verbal insults while others vowed to film its crew and make public any further discriminatory behaviour.
Industry leaders said they feared if the storm persisted, the recovery of Hong Kong’s tourism industry would be jeopardised.
As the airline struggled with a fast plummeting reputation, low staff morale due to drastic pay cuts and cumulative financial losses because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the debacle raised questions over whether Cathay could salvage its reputation, save itself from mainlanders’ ire and rebuild its standing among one of its most important customer bases – Chinese travellers flying on mainland routes to Hong Kong and destinations abroad.
According to a Mandarinspeaking passenger taking a flight from Chengdu in Sichuan province to Hong Kong on Sunday, three flight attendants made fun of customers’ English-language ability. In an online post with voice recording clips, the passenger quoted them as saying: “If you cannot say ‘blanket’, you cannot have it.”
After initially saying it was launching an investigation, Cathay was forced to act swiftly.
CEO Ronald Lam Siu-por announced on Tuesday evening, less than 48 hours after reports of the incident emerged, the three crew members had been fired as he vowed to lead a cross-departmental task force to improve the company’s culture of “customers first”.
Yesterday, he apologised in Mandarin to affected passengers and the public, the company’s fourth expression of regret over the incident in three days, soon after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu expressed anger and disappointment over the episode, demanding answers as he declared it had damaged the city’s reputation.
As the city’s flag carrier, Cathay is a listed company but it is now deemed accountable to the government after it had to rely on its help. The company suffered a record net loss of HK$21.6 billion in 2020 after the pandemic grounded flights around the world, and it accepted a HK$39 billion government-backed restructuring plan in October that year, cutting thousands of jobs and axing its regional airline Cathay Dragon.
As part of the package to keep the struggling airline afloat, the government was issued HK$19.5 billion of dividend-paying preference shares repayable in three to five years, and authorities granted a HK$7.8 billion bridging loan to the carrier.
As a cost-cutting measure, the airline introduced new and cheaper employment contracts for its flight and cabin crew.
Opinions of the incident were sharply divided among the company’s rank and file, with some denouncing the flight attendants’ behaviour as unacceptable and others attributing the incident to staff’s grievances about pay cuts. The basic monthly salary for Cathay’s junior cabin crew members is now HK$9,100, only a third of the level before the pandemic hit, with wages boosted by allowances earned from long-haul flights.
According to a source familiar with Cathay’s performance management, who declined to be named, the reaction from senior flight attendants was that the behaviour of the three fired crew members was unacceptable and against the ethics and professionalism required to care for passengers.
But some junior flight attendants felt the punishment was too harsh and complained the incident was the result of crew members’ deep dissatisfaction with their rosters.
The insider said he did not think the incident was related to training, as “all interpersonal skills are taught” to new hires on day one. Rather he said, he believed it had to do with disgruntled individuals acting out of spite.
“The overall consensus from the crew community is the company does not listen to their grievances despite voicing out their concerns,” he said, adding complaints related to one fewer crew member on flights, a reduction in allowances during layovers and the lower salaries, among others.
“Those who can afford to get another job just don’t care and treat their passengers shabbily,” he said.
Flight attendant Paul* said according to the voice recording, it seemed like the cabin crew were “just discussing a scenario that had occurred earlier”.
“Firing all three of them within hours, I doubt the company held a thorough investigation or [gave them] a proper chance to explain the situation,” he said.
“The crew morale is already very low because of all the salary and benefits problems, and now this has made it even worse.”
Flight attendant Jane* echoed the sentiment. “It’s not like the crew member actually spoke to the passenger in that way. It’s absurd that they got fired for talking among themselves,” she said.
George*, a local cabin crew member who has worked for Cathay for more than a decade, said training about discrimination was limited.
“The initial training did mention we should avoid engaging in conversations with passengers with religion and race topics, but without elaboration,” he said.
The crew member added he received on the job training once or twice a year, but the company’s instructions on avoiding discrimination put more emphasis on passengers with disabilities.
He added the airline was overreacting to the incident despite the wrongdoings of the involved cabin crew members.
“This incident has blown up just because it involves mainland passengers that made it to the state media,” he said.
But flight attendant Carmen* said the sacked crew had attitude problems and should not have treated passengers the way they did. “Some crew members do have discriminatory views,” she said. “If the guests are Japanese who cannot speak good English, I bet they would not pick on their English and would behave differently. As flight attendants, we should treat guests with hospitality and professionalism.”
She said mainland passengers were easy-going and less demanding than Western ones.
Flight attendant Michelle* told the Post she sensed widespread fear among her colleagues across different ranks after news of the termination broke, noting small talk between colleagues now involved mutual reminders to remain quiet during flights.
“No matter how unhappy we might be during the flight, we will now stomach it until we get off the plane,” she said.
She also recalled receiving a message from a senior flight attendant on Monday, when the incident went viral on social media, reminding colleagues to “uplift our professional image at all times” when in uniform and be aware of passengers when speaking in the galley.
The flight attendant said they were taught to handle incidents on the expectation passengers would complain to cabin crew immediately after they happened.
“It’s rarely about them recording the conversation quietly, posting it online and then making a complaint. For these situations, we haven’t had relevant training because we don’t expect them to do this,” she said.
The Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday urged the company to address the problem at its root.
“Cabin crew members have always respected and treated all passengers from different countries equally … Our crew members follow the company’s guidelines and communicate with passengers in English or other languages that have been assessed by the company,” it said.
“We are facing a shortage of both manpower and resources, a significant increase in workload and low salaries. The company ignores these problems, [and] as a result the morale of colleagues is extremely low, and complaints regarding cabin service have arisen.”
The union also said it noticed online appeals for passengers to provoke and record the behaviour of crew members, claiming it had caused huge pressure and extreme fear.
“The union publicly requests the company to provide clear guidance on how to protect frontline cabin crew members from unreasonable interference and successfully complete all flight services.”
An email sent by the union to its members seen by the Post also cited the company’s in-flight service delivery manual that if passengers filmed or photographed crew members without consent, crew should politely ask them to delete the content and should inform the service cabin crew manager and captain if passengers refused to comply.
Lawmaker Perry Yiu Pakleung, representing the tourism sector, said the airline should find out the cause of the fiasco and tackle the problems head on.
“Cathay should look into the fundamental cause of this debacle – whether it had something to do with the mentality of some individual crew, mounting grievances of the staff due to the drastic pay cut, or whether it was caused by the internal miscommunication with the aircrew,” he said.
“Cathay should find out the real cause to prevent similar incidents from happening again. If mainlanders have a bad impression about Hong Kong, it will be a blow to the recovery of our tourism industry.”
But Yiu emphasised that wage reductions should not be an excuse to treat passengers with disrespect. He advised the airline to enhance “customer first” training for flight attendants to ensure they upheld the spirit of hospitality, adding the company should prevent the issue from getting out of control.
Senior lecturer Andrew Yuen Chi-lok of Chinese University’s Aviation Policy and Research Centre said Cathay would need time to rebuild its image in the mainland market and advised the airline to work harder to improve its corporate culture.
“In the service industry as an airline, all staff at different levels should have a customer-centric mindset. Any kind of discrimination is not acceptable. It should be the common consensus across all staff. In addition to the explicit regulations from top down, Cathay should consider how to rebuild its culture,” he said.
While the political furore was still brewing, economist Gary Ng Cheuk-yan at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, said as the mainland market was indispensable to Cathay’s business, quality service would restore the airline’s reputation. “If there aren’t any other more cost-effective options, customers will choose Cathay. It’s a competition problem,” Ng said.
The incident was not the first time Cathay had been in the cross hairs of Hong Kong-mainland tensions.
During the 2019 anti-government protests, staff members were accused of supporting the demonstrators and even announcing their backing publicly. Then CEO Rupert Hogg and chief customer and commercial officer Paul Loo stepped down to take responsibility for failing to rein in staff, after Merlin Swire, chairman of its main shareholder, Swire Pacific, was summoned to Beijing to make reparations.
Threatened with losing the right to fly to and over the mainland, Cathay took steps to appease China’s aviation regulator, including sacking staff who had taken part in the protests and declared its “strong support” for the Hong Kong government.
Legislator Gary Zhang Xinyu, who served as operations manager at the MTR Corporation, said the government’s quick censure of Cathay over the latest incident had helped to soften the blow.
“It is better that the government officials take the initiative on incidents like this one. The earlier the better. The consequences would be severe if we allow the public sentiments to grow and escalate the incident to a political event,” Zhang said.
Lau Siu-kai, a consultant at the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies – a semi-official think tank – said the local government’s tough response and mainland media’s intense outcry revealed the extent of accumulated tensions between Hongkongers and residents over the border.
Over the past decade, this had surfaced as an issue, with Hongkongers insisting mainlanders were badly behaved while the latter said they were being looked down upon unfairly.
“Mainlanders used to think of Hong Kong as superior to the mainland, hence even if they might not be happy about the discrimination, they won’t push back, but it’s different now,” Lau said, pointing to how as the country had prospered over the years, they expected to be treated fairly.
Lau said: “We should treat each other as equals, showing respect and empathy.”
* Names changed at interviewees’ request