Cathay Pacific CEO Ronald Lam said on Monday the airline will start recruiting cabin crew from the mainland to help provide high-quality services to customers from all backgrounds.

The move followed a controversy sparked by complaints that some of its cabin crew discriminated against passengers who do not speak English during a flight from Chengdu to Hong Kong last month. Three staff were sacked over the incident.

In an internal message to all staff members, Lam said a cross-departmental task force that he led is well underway in defining the problem, analysing the underlying causes and identifying improvement needed.

One of the new measures is to start recruiting cabin crew from the mainland next month – something Lam said the airline has always intended to do after the pandemic – given the growing number of Putonghua-speaking customers.

But he stressed the cabin crew will remain predominantly Hong Kong employees, augmented by crew from outside of Hong Kong which is in line with the airline's overall customer profile.

Cathay will also increase Putonghua-speaking crew on mainland flights, to ensure they have consistent Putonghua inflight announcements from August.

Putonghua and other Asian-language capabilities will be shown on the name tags of cabin crew, and those who can speak more than one Asian language will be entitled to a monthly allowance.

The airline also said additional service culture training will begin in July for its cabin crew.

Lam said he has "every confidence" that he and his team will be able to achieve their ultimate goal to become one of the world’s greatest service brands.