A flight attendant with Cathay Pacific Airways mistakenly served a glass of white wine to a three-year-old boy seated in business class, his mother complained, as she claimed the Hong Kong flag carrier had not properly explained how the oversight happened.
The boy’s mother, surnamed Wong, contacted the Post after she shared the incident on the mainland Chinese social media platform, RedNote, last week.
She expressed concern over whether the alcohol sip her son took would result in long-term health issues and demanded a proper explanation from the company on how it would stop similar incidents from happening again.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
But the incident happened about two weeks ago and the parents, both aged 35, have not sought a medical check-up for the child. They said the boy had not shown any symptoms of discomfort so far.
The carrier offered to refund the child’s ticket with three one-class upgrade vouchers and cover the costs of any incident-related medical check-ups.
“We understand that alcohol consumption in young children can have delayed neurological, developmental and physiological impacts that may not manifest immediately. We are in the process of arranging comprehensive medical assessments with paediatric specialists,” the mother said.
“Although Cathay has apologised to us about the mistake, it never gave us a proper account of the incident, nor did it show us how it will prevent it from happening again.
“During the whole process, there was a lack of care for my son. They gave me the impression that they were trying to shirk responsibility.”
In a reply to the Post, a spokesman said that Cathay “sincerely apologised” for mistakenly serving an alcoholic drink to the child during the flight, adding that an internal review had been conducted with follow-up actions.
“Out of an abundance of caution, immediately following up on the incident, our cabin crew paged medical personnel on board and consulted an independent medical agency to ensure the child’s safety while providing the necessary help and support,” he said.
“Throughout the flight, our cabin crew regularly monitored the child’s condition. The customers disembarked the flight as normal.
“We take this matter very seriously and have launched an internal review to ensure appropriate follow-up actions are implemented and goodwill is being offered. We will continue to support and assist the family.”
The family of three boarded Cathay flight CX255 to London on the night of April 24, with each of them occupying a business class seat: the boy by the window and his father next to him in the aisle.
“The flight attendant started to serve dinner to passengers and our child just had chicken and water. We saw a glass of waterlike drink served to him and then my husband got to his seat and cut the chicken for him,” Wong recalled.
“Then my husband went back to his seat. But after a while, my son asked for water again and then we asked what was wrong, he said he took a sip and the water was too sour. We immediately took a sip and found it was white wine instead of water.”
Wong said she immediately told another flight attendant about the mistake, but the crew member just apologised, took away the glass and gave him water.
The mother then called out another senior flight attendant, who filed a complaint and sought ground-based medical advisory service via in-flight Medlink.
Later, the crew member found a French doctor on the flight who came over and told the mother that her child would be fine, adding that children as young as five could take alcohol in his country.
“Then the senior crew member reported what the French doctor said to the Medlink, which she said gave no further advice. She simply asked us to give him water and alert them if he suffered discomfort such as nausea or fever,” Wong said.
Wong said that in response to her complaint, Cathay noted in an email on April 26 that it had conducted immediate coaching for all cabin crew members to reinforce the importance of checking orders before serving them.
“The flight’s pilot was made aware of the situation during the flight, and appropriate internal measures are being taken,” it said.
A Cathay flight purser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed the incident was a result of the carrier’s “declining service standards” as it scrambled to hire inexperienced cabin crew to meet its expansion target without sufficient training.
“This isn’t a single incident and should serve as a wake-up call for Cathay … inexperienced cabin crew have committed many incomprehensible, silly mistakes which did not make sense,” she said.
She added that for a case like this, usually the crew member should mark down on the napkin to ensure they give the right drink to the child.
“But nowadays, inexperienced crew will not care about this protocol,” she said.
“The training is very inadequate for new joiners and fails to cover many scenarios. For example, in the past, the training for a purser was at least a few weeks, but nowadays, it has been shortened to six days.”
The purser said the parents had their fair share of responsibility as they should have watched over the child to ensure the right kind of food and drink were served to him.
More from South China Morning Post:
For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2025.