Cathay Pacific To Hire Flight Attendants From Mainland China

Cathay Pacific will start hiring flight attendants from mainland China, and will provide all flight attendants with “culture training” on dealing with passengers from mainland China. I’m curious to see how this plays out…

Cathay Pacific recruiting mainland Chinese crews

Cathay Pacific has informed employees that the airline plans to start recruiting flight attendants in mainland China. As reported by Danny Lee at Bloomberg, here’s what Cathay Pacific CEO Ronald Lam said in a memo to staff:

“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 from July.”

Not only will the oneworld airline recruit flight attendants from mainland China, but it will also give all flight attendants “culture training,” to make sure they treat mainland Chinese passengers with respect.

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.

I suspect it’s the former. 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.

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 doing this

Why is Cathay Pacific suddenly hiring flight attendants from mainland China? I think there are a few reasons, and the timing is no coincidence.

Several weeks 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 become 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.

Bottom line

Cathay Pacific will start recruiting flight attendants from mainland China in July, and will also give 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.

What do you make of Cathay Pacific hiring flight attendants from mainland China?