China Airlines

Funny, a friend asked me that 3 years ago or so when my girlfriend was flying CI from SFO-TPE-MNL. At the time, I said "They've had a lot of accidents, but so has United, so has American, doesn't mean I wouldn't fly on them." She took a picture of the 737 she flew on to Manila for me.

The next afternoon that same 737 was a pile of ashes on the ramp somewhere in Japan after catching fire.

So again I see this question, and I would say hell to the no. If I need to go to TPE, I'm going EVA.
 
FYI: All new hire pilots there are Taiwanese since new management took office.. they're slowly getting rid of all expats as they train natives...

That being said if you wanna be there, EVA and Dragonair aren't terribly hard to get on with once ya meet mins.

I liked Tapei as well... Pijo ftw?
 
turbomax97 said:
FYI: All new hire pilots there are Taiwanese since new management took office.. they're slowly getting rid of all expats as they train natives...

That being said if you wanna be there, EVA and Dragonair aren't terribly hard to get on with once ya meet mins.

I liked Tapei as well... Pijo ftw?
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EVA is slowly getting rid of their expats also. Dragonair is a Hong Kong airline and now part of Cathay Pacific. When they were separate it was virtually impossible to get hired by them unless you were English, Australian, or Canadian and had an Airbus 320 type rating. I know because I sat on their doorstep for 2 days in order to talk to their HR folks. With 10,000 hours total time, over 4000 PIC jet, and a Mandarin Chinese speaker they sent me a nice thanks, but no thanks letter. It actually said I wasn't qualified. Hmmm :confused:. Then next week they were in Oz and then the UK recruiting. Go figure.

I'd personally avoid China Airlines as well. Here is a relatively unknown incident that occured in February, 1996. An MD-11 with 3 captains and 1 first officer on the flight deck took off enroute to LAX. In the climb they had a problem retracting the flaps. Both of the flying pilots ( one a check airman ) concentrated on the flaps problem, as did the other captain in the jumpseat. The aircraft reached 42 degrees nose up and, as airplanes do at 42 degrees nose up, it stalled. In the ensuing recovery they over-stressed the horizontal stabilizer. One passenger died of a heart attack. Guess what they did? .............................Continued on to LAX. Un-believable, but true.


It is true that they are doing better in the last few years. The main driver for that is that they military pilots are now in the minority. The ab-initio group is now in charge and since they've had western training they are far better pilots than the ex-military guys. They have CRM skills and a solid foundation in their flying.

Pilots can leave China Airlines. One is a classmate of mine at Emirates and is now a B777 Captain. He had to pay out a little on his bond, but he was able to leave. The EVA ab-initio guys have a 15 year bond and that can be paid out as well as we have one or two EVA guys here.




Typhoonpilot
 
When I first read about that MD-11 incident I thought there was no way it could be true. But the more I learned about the company, the less shocking it became. Especially after I read through the report of the 747SP incident. Yikes!
 
On January 25, 2002, at 0243 Alaska local time, China Airlines Flight CI011, an A340-300 airplane (bearing ROC Registration Number B-18805), was cleared for takeoff from Runway 32 of the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to Chiang Kai-Shek (CKS) International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. The airplane subsequently tookoff from Taxiway Kilo and proceeded to its destination and landed without further incident.
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source
 
toata said:
My vote is for EVA...not that it matters :p



Oh and yes, pijo ftw...
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I'd be a lot more comfortable on EVA as well........and it's pi jiu. Jiu means alcohol. So you also have bai jiu ( rice wine ), pu tao jiu ( wine, literally grape alcohol ), and hong jiu ( whisky, etc ). Gao liang ( they still spell it Kao Liang ) is a sorgum derived alcohol in Taiwan that is quite potent.

To the OP, if you're going to Taiwan to learn Mandarin beware that they have about 4 active transliteration methods in Taiwan. It can be quite confusing to someone new to the language. Some schools still use the Yale method, while others might be using Wade-Giles, or the new Taiwan government backed one. Why they just can't adopt the mainland's Pin Yin system is beyond me. Pin Yin is far more user friendly, witness the Gao Liang reference above. For year's Americans pronounced Bei Jing as Pe King because of Wade-Giles :banghead:.

In Taiwan the children learn Bo-Po-Mo-Fo. It's a system of 37 characters that correspond to the sounds used in Mandarin. It's is actually quite a good system for learning pronunciation and is the initial method that I used when learning the language. Whenever I wasn't sure what someone was saying or how to say a word I would ask for it to be written in Bo-Po-Mo-Fo. It doesn't travel outside of Taiwan though so it's of no use on the mainland or elsewhere. That's why I switched to Pin Yin.



Typhoonpilot
 
typhoonpilot said:
I'd be a lot more comfortable on EVA as well........and it's pi jiu. Jiu means alcohol. So you also have bai jiu ( rice wine ), pu tao jiu ( wine, literally grape alcohol ), and hong jiu ( whisky, etc ). Gao liang ( they still spell it Kao Liang ) is a sorgum derived alcohol in Taiwan that is quite potent.
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*sigh* that's how far my mandarin has fallen...I can speak in mandarin pretty well, but my vocabulary is pretty much all forgotten, and reading, writing, and :yeahthat: are beyond me (for now :D)
 
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