HK leader slams Cathay over discrimination row that irked China

Hong Kong’s leader joined state media in blasting Cathay Pacific Airways over an incident where flight attendants were recorded making disparaging remarks about mainland Chinese passengers. “I am outraged and disappointed that these bad words and deeds happened on a Hong Kong flight,” John Lee said Wednesday at an event in southern China’s Guangdong province. He said the carrier’s crew members had “hurt the feelings of compatriots in Hong Kong and the mainland” and that he’d spoken to Cathay Chief Executive Officer Ronald Lam to express his concern. A crew member on a Sunday flight from Chengdu in Sichuan province to Hong Kong was recorded allegedly saying that if passengers couldn’t say “blanket” in English, they shouldn’t have one. The comments are followed by laughter in the background. As criticism over the comments grew, Cathay said Tuesday it would investigate the incident, before quickly announcing it had fired three flight attendants. Lam apologized in a statement to the affected passengers and vowed “zero tolerance” for violations of company rules and standards. Hong Kong’s flagship airline is controlled by British conglomerate Swire Pacific. A Weibo account under the People’s Daily overseas edition lashed out at the airline in an online post late Tuesday, saying that Hong Kong is part of China and needs China’s support. Xinhua News Agency said that if Cathay doesn’t get rid of its “old sickness” it “wont fly far.” A hashtag about Cathay’s apology was one of the top-trending topics on Weibo, with more than 190m views in total. The subject continued to dominate the platform Wednesday, including discussions on whether people in Hong Kong discriminate against Mandarin speakers. A passenger who posted the clip on the social-media platform Xiaohongshu didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in a subsequent post wrote that Cathay executives had called her to learn more about what happened on Flight 987. <br/>