The recent incident of three Cathay Pacific cabin crew members who discriminated against and insulted non-English-speaking and non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese mainland passengers is, indeed, a public relations disaster for the flagship carrier. The carrier’s effort to win back the hearts of mainland passengers is suffering a serious setback, thanks to the die-hard attitude of its labor union.

After the scandal surfaced, Cathay Pacific’s CEO, Ronald Lam Siu-por, publicly apologized multiple times, and he made a swift decision to dismiss the three cabin crew members involved in the scandal. He also pledged to conduct a comprehensive service-quality review to remedy the situation. The Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union (FAU), however, added fuel to the fire by issuing a self-defeating statement, making the situation even worse.

Obviously, the FAU’s statement was not written to mitigate the negative impact of the incident. It was actually a defense for the three crew members who had mocked a mainland passenger on Flight CX987 from Chengdu, Sichuan province, to Hong Kong. A passenger sitting near the galley recorded the conversations and posted them on social media, sparking a big uproar of complaints and criticism against the alleged deep-rooted favoritism shown by Cathay Pacific flight crew members to English-speaking passengers, and the long-held discriminatory treatment against mainland passengers. Some sensational online comments even called for a boycott of the airline.

Legislation work on intraracial discrimination covering mainland residents needs to proceed quickly so that similar discrimination incidents can be handled effectively

In its opening sentence, the FAU’s statement said the union “expresses deepest regret regarding the recent unpleasant incident that occurred on a Cathay Pacific flight, which resulted in three crew members being terminated”. Apparently, the focus is on the three fired crew members, and the “regret” given to them for having been fired by the company.

It is understandable that as an official body representing the primary interests of employees, a trade union’s stance usually opposes that of the employer. However, when it becomes a public relations crisis big enough to affect the fate of a company, all parties involved should naturally put aside their disagreements and work together to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible. The mainland market constitutes more than 67 percent of Cathay Pacific’s business, and the carrier is still on the road to recovery from the pandemic. It cannot afford an extensive boycott by mainland passengers if the public relations nightmare continues to snowball. Nevertheless, the FAU seems to be acting to hinder rather than help defuse the scandal by provoking more negative responses from mainland netizens.

In this case, the three involved crew members were caught red-handed making fun of a mainland passenger’s inability to distinguish between the English words “carpet” and “blanket”, which are only slightly different in the Chinese language. Recorded phrases posted include “If you cannot say ‘blanket’ in English, you cannot have it” and “ ‘Carpet’ is on the floor,” followed by laughter from those crew members.

The passenger who posted the conversations online also accused Cathay Pacific’s crew members of insulting non-Cantonese-speaking mainland passengers. He heard a crew member complain to her colleague that an old man and a small child “apparently do not understand human words” when she made an announcement in Cantonese to request the duo return to their seats as the warning-light signal was still on.

It is beyond question that the remarks were offensive. It is a basic goodwill gesture to include some empathetic words to soothe the sentiment of mainland passengers in an official statement if the FAU really wants to defuse the crisis.

Ironically, apart from including no apologetic words for the offensive remarks made by the three crew members, the FAU has also exposed its arrogance by shifting the responsibility of the “unpleasant incident” to the “extremely low morale” of its cabin crew members caused by the shortage of both manpower and resources. The union said the rise in complaints against cabin service was due to “a significant increase in workload and low salaries” of cabin crew members. It urged the carrier to address the problem to improve their morale.

Consequently, the FAU’s statement has further stirred up the emotions of mainland netizens, criticizing the union’s distorted logic and arrogance. Although Cathay Pacific’s management immediately clarified that the FAU was an independent trade union and does not represent the company in any way, and the company does not support or agree with the FAU’s position on the matter, it failed to pacify the enraged mainland netizens and the general public of Hong Kong.

The discrimination scandal has tarnished the reputation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as an international aviation hub, financial and business center as well as a key tourist destination.

While Cathay Pacific is now under the watchful eyes of the community to rebuild its corporate culture and governance, we should also remain vigilant to the deep-rooted discrimination against mainlanders among a large portion of local residents. This kind of stereotyping, bias and prejudice against mainland residents, which reached a climax in the 2019 “color revolution”, is detrimental to the mainland-Hong Kong relationship.

Related parties should strengthen the education work about modern Chinese history that has been seriously disrupted and distorted in the past 25 years for the new generation. Legislation work on intraracial discrimination covering mainland residents needs to proceed quickly so that similar discrimination incidents can be handled effectively.

If that kind of discrimination is not eradicated in the long run, it will become a convenient tool to be consumed repeatedly by a handful of ill-intentioned people to hinder the development of the HKSAR and its further integration with the motherland.

The author, a Hong Kong-based freelance writer, is an adviser to the Hong Kong Association of Media Veterans.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.