A couple of months ago, Cathay Pacific revealed that it would start hiring flight attendants from mainland China, and would provide all flight attendants with “culture training” on dealing with passengers from mainland China. We’ve now seen the airline start this process, so I think it’s interesting to cover what that looks like.
In this post:
Cathay Pacific recruiting mainland Chinese crews
In June 2023, Cathay Pacific CEO Ronald Lam wrote a memo to employees, outlining plans to start recruiting flight attendants in mainland China:
“With the growing number of Putonghua-speaking customers, it has always been our intention to recruit a proportion of cabin crew from the Chinese Mainland after the pandemic. We plan to start the recruitment process of cabin crew in the Chinese mainland.”
Not only is the oneworld airline recruiting flight attendants from mainland China, but it’s also giving all flight attendants “culture training,” to make sure they treat mainland Chinese passengers with respect.
As reported by SCMP, the airline has now started the process of recruiting in mainland China. Cathay Pacific has received more than 2,000 applicants for these roles, and that has already been narrowed down to 600 candidates. The plan is to initially hire up to 300 flight attendants, so about half of the people who are currently in the running could get a job.
One thing that’s not entirely clear to me is if Cathay Pacific is setting up crew bases in mainland China, or if the airline is recruiting flight attendants in mainland China to move to Hong Kong.
Cathay Pacific has historically had several crew bases outside of Hong Kong, given the high cost of living there. Cathay Pacific did close many of these bases during the pandemic, including all bases in the United States. It looks like that trend will now be reversed, at least in mainland China.
Then again, the initial recruitment event is happening in Shenzhen, just a short ferry ride from Hong Kong, so perhaps the plan is to have some flight attendants actually commute to Hong Kong.
Here’s what Lam had to say about the recruitment event that has just taken place:
“We are very encouraged by the response and the quality of the candidates interviewed today. We plan to recruit 200 to 300 mainland cabin crew this year and by 2025 we hope to increase the number to 1,000 to 2,000.”
It also remains to be seen if these flight attendants will exclusively work flights between mainland China and Hong Kong, or if they’ll be cycled throughout the network. For what it’s worth, when Cathay Pacific had US flight attendant bases, they’d exclusively work the ultra long haul flights between the United States and Hong Kong.
Cathay Pacific’s motive for hiring in mainland China
Why is Cathay Pacific suddenly hiring flight attendants from mainland China? I think there are a few reasons, and the timing is no coincidence.
A few months ago, Cathay Pacific made global headlines, when flight attendants on a flight between Chengdu and Hong Kong were accused of making fun of Mandarin speaking passengers.
A flight attendant was caught on tape saying that Mandarin passengers “cannot understand the human language.” Furthermore, a passenger asked for a carpet (when they intended to say “blanket”), and the flight attendant joked that “if you cannot say blanket in English, you cannot have it… carpet is on the floor, feel free if you want to lie on it.”
Suffice it to say that this became a huge story (especially in mainland China), and Cathay Pacific immediately took action, and fired the flight attendants involved.
More broadly, Cathay Pacific has other motives for hiring flight attendants from mainland China. For one, Cathay Pacific’s percentage of passengers from mainland China has increased massively in the past several months, given how capacity constrained mainland Chinese airlines are (due to limiting bilateral flight agreements). Most international passengers from mainland China now need to connect elsewhere in order to travel abroad.
Lastly, Hong Kong is increasingly losing its independence from mainland China, and I imagine many businesses in Hong Kong will cater more and more to those from mainland China. Also keep in mind that Air China is Cathay Pacific’s second biggest shareholder.
For what it’s worth, Lam insists that this recruitment drive isn’t due to the recent event, but rather due to the carrier’s goal of being more inclusive:
“The reason we have decided to recruit cabin crew from mainland China is because increasingly we have more and more flights between Hong Kong and the mainland, and more customers from the mainland. It is therefore natural for us to expand our team of cabin crew to include candidates from the mainland. We believe this will make our organisation even more diverse and in a better position to serve our customers from different backgrounds.”
Bottom line
Cathay Pacific has started recruiting flight attendants from mainland China, and is also giving all flight attendants culture training. This comes as the airline is seeing a big uptick in passengers from mainland China. On top of that, it also follows Cathay Pacific landing itself in quite some controversy, following an incident where a crew was disrespecting Mandarin speaking passengers.
The airline has now held its first recruitment event in Shenzhen, and should shortly be hiring hundreds of flight attendants from mainland China.
What do you make of Cathay Pacific hiring flight attendants from mainland China?
Now based on this comment, we can see those who hates the CCP are in fact hater of the Chinese people. Nice one whoever uses that defense to hate ccp only but not chinese people. Haha they’re uneducated bastard right?
They produce the most college graduates and doctorates. God i love to see some of the ignorant white people get schooled by sophisticated chinese.
Horrible decision! Too terrible to be true hiring Mainlander crews, low educated without understanding of Chinese and Western etiquette in international way. Majority of Mainlanders are not educated much. They love to create conflicts with others. If CX really wants to have their crews speaking good mandarin then please recruit crews from Taiwan, at least they are much better in servicing. CX is just getting cheap to hire those mainlander crews!
CX is down grading itself. Whi cares
Cathay: hiring mainland FAs probably to work mainland routes and assuage mainland customer anxieties, an obvious customer-first business decision given recent controversies and the customer base
OMAAT commenters: The end of HK! Communism! Going down the tubes!
Really? These all sound completely ridiculous
A tempest in a teapot. This strikes me as a sensible business decision for an airline still struggling with ramping up operations, nothing more, nothing less.
CX (formerly with sister airline KA) has always had a huge share of mainland passengers, even if not to the extent they do now, given the mainland route restrictions, a situation which will revert closer to the pre-pandemic normal sooner or later.
It's a sign of our times...
A tempest in a teapot. This strikes me as a sensible business decision for an airline still struggling with ramping up operations, nothing more, nothing less.
CX (formerly with sister airline KA) has always had a huge share of mainland passengers, even if not to the extent they do now, given the mainland route restrictions, a situation which will revert closer to the pre-pandemic normal sooner or later.
It's a sign of our times that people want to see politics behind everything. All I have to say is, I have flown CX many times since the pandemic (I'm based in HK), and it's still a great airline with great service, superior to all other OneWorld carriers I have flown recently, including JAL. With all HK lounges finally reopened, the airline seems to have its mojo back. Now let's just hope air fares come back down to earth!
Wow. Sensible comment on OMAAT.
DT
Sad to see a Premium airline with nearly 80 years of history just going down like Hong Kong (more than 100 years in making) in 4 years.
Take your white privilege and shove it up your ass.
They be waving the PRC flag soon ijbol, best wishes from the country with the worst declining population!
The slow but certain, tragic 'China-risation' of Hong Kong, Going to difficult to train main-landers, up to the standards of CX FAs. (Main-land Chinese are easy to spot in HKG, as they lack a certain sophistication.... and lack any knowledge of HKG /Western etiquette.)
Wasn't there also a heated discussion a few years ago....over whether Cantonese (or Mandarin) should be used first, for the pre-takeoff safety briefing !
Yeah. Chinese people aren’t sophisticated uncivilized bastard right?
This is to those who says westerner hates CCP and not Chinese people. That’s a myth. Just look at this tone deaf comment. Why is western etiquette associated with sophistication and the ROW aren’t? These type will only respect you asians if you aren’t from mainland and bow down to the west.
Sick.
Hi Lucky, the Cathay group has been hiring and staffing flights with mainland crew for some time prior to the pandemic, on since-closed Cathay Dragon, the airline formerly known as Dragonair ("KA"). Crews were based in Shanghai and flew Hong Kong-mainland routes, including multi-day patterns to/from HKG and other cities in China in the KA network, not just Shanghai. Cathay's Headlands Hotel is available for outport crew staying overnight in HK. Although it's true this...
Hi Lucky, the Cathay group has been hiring and staffing flights with mainland crew for some time prior to the pandemic, on since-closed Cathay Dragon, the airline formerly known as Dragonair ("KA"). Crews were based in Shanghai and flew Hong Kong-mainland routes, including multi-day patterns to/from HKG and other cities in China in the KA network, not just Shanghai. Cathay's Headlands Hotel is available for outport crew staying overnight in HK. Although it's true this is the first time for mainline Cathay to hire mainland outport crews, most locals based in Hong Kong respected Cathay Dragon/Dragonair as a full service, premium airline and those flights were regularly staffed by mixed or mainland crews. Just to put some context!
The news say it loud clearly. The mainland crew will be "based In HK" but they can live in the mainland if they can commute to the airport within 90 mins (so Shenzhen is OK definitely).
And they will serve at flights other than those to and from Mainland. They will also have the same renumeration package with the HK crew. CX will help get them a HK work visa
Some data points from the ground. I flew both CX and CZ intra-Asia recently. The CZ crew was more professional. The CX FA seemed like she didn't want to be there, and their A330 regional J seat is outdated and extremely uncomfortable. CX has ways to go in the climb back to the top tier, and they'd be lucky to have a crew of my CZ flight's caliber.
OMAAT now using cell phones made in Mainland China!
One step closer to Cathay becoming a crappy Mainland airline. Terrible decision.
Oh no.....
Hopefully they would indicate if the flight has Chinese FA so premium passengers may choose other flights.
Most of mainland people are just uneducated
Yes, John. They will advertise in advance where the FA are from, as well as height, weight, age and interest in people called John.
Talk about poor education.
No surprise that that FA was fired, that's a rude way to talk to a customer no matter what.
They were not talking TO the customer. They were talking about it BEHIND the customer.
Cost wise a good move as the job market in mainland is terrible. But culture wise, a terrible move. I can't imagine the animosity that will be so prevalent. There is such a distrust and hatred for mainlanders by HKers and likewise the view of HK folks by mainlanders aren't that positive either. Well good luck to CX.
Hong Kong is being swallowed up by Mainland government. This was just a matter of time. The exodus of those in HK who can get away is already happening. HK has already lost its premier business ranking to Singapore and it’s moving further and further down the list. HK simply doesn’t see itself as Mainland Chinese but the government is sure as heck going to make them act like it. You can feel the tension...
Hong Kong is being swallowed up by Mainland government. This was just a matter of time. The exodus of those in HK who can get away is already happening. HK has already lost its premier business ranking to Singapore and it’s moving further and further down the list. HK simply doesn’t see itself as Mainland Chinese but the government is sure as heck going to make them act like it. You can feel the tension and more unrest is going to happen in HK. It’s a beautiful place but it’s definitely becoming less attractive for international businesses which is making them more dependent on Mainland which is what the government wants.
I definitely feel sorry for folks who've lived in Hong Kong for a long time, it was clear as soon as the British decided to give it back that the people there who didn't have the money to get out were going to be in for a rough ride. They've been living the epitome of Capitalism and now, in just a few years, they will be living under a Communist regime. They are for sure gonna suffer.
100% on point both of your comments. So sad.
Worth pointing out that, before mainland got HK back, Hong Kong people had zero vote with a white governor assigned by UK, when it was colonized. Are you aware?
Yeah and at the same time over in the mainland, millions were dying in the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution. They didn't get to vote on that either but I guess they were happy what's more important was their leader wasn't white.
@Guest
I have a feeling many in HK were happier then than they are today?
Farewell, Cathay and HK. We had a good run. As we are now seeing in the US, authoritarian communists tend to ruin everything.
LOL only someone who knows nothing about authoritarian communists would make such as asinine comparison.
As a Venezuelan who lived 40 years in Venezuela, I totally agree with Mantis comment.
Birds of a feather, I suppose...
At the end, it always comes down to cost. Mainland China is experiencing high unemployment rate (some experts are suggesting the real unemployment rate up to 50%), and Cathay can hire at lower rate there than they can in HK, where it has a low unemployment rate at around 2.4%.
Why is "employment" a good thing?
No matter what they do now, they can't salvage their tarnished reputation in China. The younger generation in mainland China, which is witnessing the country's rapid development, will naturally lean towards other options when it comes to the niche and highly profitable premium lifestyle choices. China Southern is currently serving soup in Business class, and they are quickly catching up to Cathay Pacific.
SOUP?
Cathay should just turn out the lights.
The secret to business success: soup!
Soup? This standard is a bit too low, isn't it? Or are you trying to say they are really that bad?
It certainly was surprising last time (early 2023) I flew on CX to mainland that with a plane full of mainland passengers, their announcement was only in English and Cantonese. Even western based airlines have announcements in mandarin and dedicated mandarin speaking attendants.