Optimism in the air as mainland crew start Cathay duties

Cathay Pacific's first batch of more than 100 mainland flight attendants has started work after a seven-week training.

The cabin crew from various mainland provinces are not required to learn Cantonese but must have a good command of English as they will be deployed on flights to overseas and mainland cities.

Some of them have been deployed on flights to destinations like Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Japan, while others are completing their service and safety training and will begin their duties soon.

"Once they start their duty, they will be deployed on various flight routes - the same as other colleagues," said Mandy Ng Kit-man, Cathay's director of service delivery.

"The cabin crew on Cathay flights have always come from different regions, with most of them from Hong Kong. We have flight attendants speaking Cantonese, Putonghua, English and other languages on each flight and we can take care of customers from different places with a team spirit," she said.

Ng said she was "very satisfied" with the performance of the newly hired crew.

"The mainland cabin crew will complement our very diverse cabin crew community to better serve our customers coming from different parts of the world with different backgrounds," she said, adding the airline has noticed an increasing number of Putonghua-speaking passengers.

The airline had earlier said it targeted hiring 200 to 300 mainland cabin crew last year but failed to achieve it.

However, Ng said the process is still ongoing, with a recruitment event held in Beijing last week and another in Guangzhou from today to Thursday.

"The recruitment event last year was just the beginning and more than 100 mainland crew are starting their duty. But it doesn't mean we will stop hiring mainlanders after the events as we have always been hosting various recruitment activities," she said.

"We hope to recruit 1,500 mainland cabin crew by 2025, bringing our flight attendant team to 10,000," Ng said, adding "we expect the mainland will become the second largest source of our flight attendants."

One of the recruits, Harry Wu from Nanjing, said he will continue to learn Cantonese despite it being unnecessary.

He started working on January 8 on a flight to Kuala Lumpur, when he misheard a passenger requesting for a blanket instead of a towel. The Cantonese pronunciation of "blanket" sounds similar to "towel" in Putonghua.

"I think it's necessary to learn some simple Cantonese so that we can better get used to life in Hong Kong," he said.

wallis.wang@singtaonewscorp.com