HK Actor Called Showoff Over Video Of His Business Class Experience & Telling People "Don't Fly Economy"

Creating entertaining content is part of an actor’s job, but this is what happens when they completely miss the mark.

Recently, TVB actor Karl Ting shared on Instagram a video of him at the airport with Hong Kong actresses Jinny Ng and Joey Thye. 

The trio, who were leaving the country to film a travel programme, were first seen walking on a travelator in the boarding gates while the caption in the video read: "How to survive a 10-hour flight in Economy." 

Then, what initially sounded like a totally harmless travel vlog had a major plot twist.

The next scene cuts to the trio soundly asleep on their flight, each seated comfortably in a Business Class seat.

The words “don’t fly Economy” then flashed on the video, presumably in an attempt by Karl to be humorous.

Unfortunately, it came across woefully tone-deaf and netizens, as expected, did not appreciate his joke at all.

Many flocked to the comments to criticise the actor for "showing off that [he's] high class" and accused him of "deliberately mocking" those who fly Economy.

"You think you are better than others just because you don't take Economy?" a netizen snarked.

The topic "Why is Karl Ting getting scolded?" has also started trending on Chinese social media platforms after Karl's video went viral.

In response to the backlash, the actor, whose original video was ironically captioned "sorry not sorry", has since posted a new IG reel to, well, say sorry.

"A video of mine has blown up recently, but in a bad way," he explained in his apology video. "People felt that we were flaunting our wealth in the video, and we're sorry, because we were totally not intending to do that."

The actor stated that although there was no intent to show off, he remains deeply apologetic to those who felt upset by it.

"We don't want to be like that, neither will we argue that we didn't mean to do it and sweep it under the rug," he added. 

"It's also true that we lacked foresight and didn't think meticulously enough, so we'll learn from this mistake," said Karl, stressing that the video was meant purely for entertainment, not to convey any values.