Boy, the stories I could tell after flying in Taiwan for three years. I should write a book someday.
Just to be fair though, the Mandarin flight that crashed in Hong Kong had an Italian Captain. As I recall he was ushered out of the country by the Italian embassy to avoid getting thrown in jail.
To reply to the original question, do a search on PPrune (
www.pprune.org ) under the Far East section. There should be some good information on there. The guy whose name is " Ilovelonghaul " looks through rose colored glasses though.
I enjoyed my time in Taiwan tremendously. The people are very friendly and living in Taipei can be quite fun. Taiwan is a beautiful island when you get out of the big cities, especially if you can make it over to the east coast or into the central mountains.
Working for China Airlines would be best as a Captain ( PIC ). There exists a much steeper cockpit gradient in Asia than the United States. If you went as a cruiser then I think they were talking about 8 to 12 years to upgrade. I might be confusing that with EVA though.
The contract you sign will be the best it will ever get on the day you sign it. From then on it only gets worse so make sure it is a good contract and one you can still live with if it gets reduced by 10 % per year.
As the others have indicated though, SARS has severely impacted China Airlines, Cathay, EVA, Dragonair, Singapore, and others so hiring won't be happening anytime soon.
I'll put a plug in for Emirates though. We are hiring for the foreseeable future and still expect to more than double in size in the next 7 years. It would be a much better opportunity than China Airlines. Just ask my classmate who quit there to come to work here.
Typhoonpilot