Watch: Cathay Pacific bans HK couple who kicked, verbally abused Chinese woman for reclining her chair

The Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has added a husband-wife duo to its no-fly list after a social media storm over the couple's rude behaviour towards a woman from mainland China over reclining her chair.

The Cantonese-speaking couple from Hong Kong was caught on camera by the woman who speaks Mandarin, the major language of mainland China, showing them harassing and verbally abusing her.

She posted the confrontation on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, and the video went viral over the weekend, garnering nearly 29,000 comments.

The woman said that at one point, she was kicked by the couple who abused her using racially discriminatory language.

Cathay said on Sunday (Sep 22) that the couple will not be allowed in any of its flights in future, vowing to a "zero-tolerance policy” towards disrespectful behaviour.

The incident happened on September 17 on a Hong Kong-London flight. 

The middle-aged husband and wife accused the mainland woman of obstructing their view of the in-flight television screen, and demanded that she straighten her seat.

She refused to do so. Then the wife stretched her legs on the armrests of the woman's seat, scolded and slapped her wrist.

"When she realised I couldn't speak Cantonese, she started calling me 'mainland girl' in a derogatory tone," she said, according to a report in South China Morning Post.

The husband pushed the back of her seat, the woman said, making it shake.

At one point, the wife raised her middle finger at the woman, who sought help from the cabin crew that only asked her to put her seat back in straight position.

"I was shocked because it was not meal time, yet the flight attendant wanted me to compromise," the woman said. "I rejected the suggestion," media reports quoted her as saying.

Some co-passengers slammed the Hong Kong couple. "Don't call yourself a Hong Konger, you bully," said one of them.

"How old are you? Why are you bullying a young girl?," asked another.

After she posted her ordeal on Xiaohongshu, the woman received several similar sympathetic comments. One of them said if the couple wanted more space, they should have paid for first-class seats.

The woman said in a TV interview on Sunday that she was moved by other passengers who had spoken up during the incident, the South China Morning Post said in a report.

“When the first person spoke up, tears welled up in my eyes. I felt a deep sense of injustice, but also a relief that someone understood and spoke up for me, including a lot of Hongkongers who helped me. I see this as an isolated incident and do not want it to affect the unity between the two places,” SCMP quoted her as saying.