CATHAY Pacific Airways apologised after a passenger accused its flight attendants of discriminating against non-English speakers, prompting China’s state media to criticise the airline for ‘worshipping foreigners’. Cathay said the experience of passengers travelling on its CX987 flight from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu to Hong Kong on Sunday caused ‘widespread concern’ and said it sincerely apologised. The airline has fired three flight attendants involved in the incident after an internal investigation, CEO Ronald Lam said in another statement yesterday, in which he apologised again. “I would like to reiterate that Cathay Pacific takes a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to serious violations of company rules and ethics by individual employees and will not tolerate them,” Lam said.