That was not an issue for me.... The crews actually initiated whatever conversation in English, although I was holding and reading a Chinese-written book right in front of my face. Perhaps the crews understand the socio-economic class distinctions the customers perceive and just start out the conversation in English as a way to show their respect.

LOL... Those at Starbucks and Pacific Coffee in Hong Kong will do whatever they can to use English even though I started out the conversation in Cantonese.

This is an airline that does not provide announcements in Thai or Malay on flights to/from Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. We can't expect too much from CX these days.

I'm not saying this applies to you. But quite often if a native Cantonese speaker hears your accent and can tell you are not a native speaker or a CBC, that native speaker often has a tendancy to respond to you in English.

Heck today I had lunch with a distant cousin at Market Village (Asian Theme Mall in Markham[Toronto]). We decided to order something at the food court. I ordered using Cantonese and the lady at the service counter responded to me in Cantonese. But when it came to my cousin's turn to order, the lady kept responding to him in English despite him constantly speaking in 100% Cantonese. He's a CBC (Canadian Born Chinese) but he speaks Cantonese more than fluent enough to carry heavy detailed conversations. But his Canadian accent is more than enough to generate an accent to his Cantonese-speaking tone and that is more than enough for a native Cantonese speaker to recognise the difference.

Again I'm not implying that you are necessarily one of these and not all native Cantonese speakers treat CBCs this way, but this is often the case when Hong Kongers and CBCs engage in conversations.

There have been some interesting points made, particularly the one regarding the issue of 'face' and cantonese speakers less willing to speak PTH (this is a most common phen').

Just to the other side of the coin, perhaps some reply in English to Chinese looking people because it is a face issue for the employee, ie, they are proving 'something'

That is right - that does not apply to me. I am a 100% native Cantonese speaker and not an ABC or CBC. 9 years of being Americanized should not have taken away my native tone and accent.

That reminds me of a friend telling me that he recently got into a dispute with a middle-aged man in an elevator in Hong Kong. The man suddenly switched to English (cough... broken) and started threatening to sue of some non-sense human rights violation. My friend, being in the US 2 times longer than me, immediately responded with fluent English and made a point that Chinese should communicate in mother-tone in Chinese sovereignty. The man left "faceless" as my friend described.

zhaobao brought up a valid point that CX should, however, at least use the language of the origin and destination city/county as well as English. On my recent Thai Air Asia flight HKG-HKT, all announcements were made in English-Thai-Mandarin IIRC.

From my past experience, both TG and MH offer announcements in Mandarin (not Cantonese) on flights to/from HKG. (OK... now we are going to get into an argument why the announcements are in Mandarin and not Cantonese... ha ha ha)

...and you all seem to assume that Mandarin (only) speakers actually comply with safety announcements...

That's due to the small quantity of HK immigrants living in L.A.

I'm starting to think it's based on the mood of ICM and his/her directions. On my HKG-JFK flight back there's ONLY English announcements at first! But the airplane when through a horrific turbulence and at first it's only English, but later on they added Mandarin (but no Cantonese.) I would of LOL but the turbulence was really horrific.

Does anyone here get offended when announcements such as "please stay seated until the plane gets to the gate" or "please keep your seatbelt fastened and stay in your seat as we are 10 seconds away from landing" are only made in Mandarin and not in English or Cantonese?

Ummmmm... I beg to differ: on my flight today from SIN-LHR on BA they were constantly making flight announcements in English and MANDARIN - now please can someone tell me WHY???? It really did my head in ...

Even SQ do not make announcements in Mandarin, unless they fly directly to Chinese-speaking countries like China or Taiwan.

Oh yea, this happens all the time on the KA China flights. Hilarious. They don't even bother with the English and Cantonese. They know exactly who the offenders are.

Unfortunately this action may not be politically correct, but it's empirically correct. When my flight touched down on JFK the Mandarin speakers immediately jump up and started to unload the baggage, all the while the Captian is broadcasting (in English) that the plane will need to remain on the minor runways for JFK to clear a terminal for them and we are to remain seated.

However, the FAs (in my cabin at least) were very friendly in telling them to sit down and it's not yet time to being disembark procedure.

Just info.
Still announcement made in Japanese(and English, Cantonese) for Japan-bound flights.