Airline safety ratings? China Air

[hankb]

Hi..I seem to remember coming across a link to a good site that rates airlines for safety, but doing a search here I find nothing. I am tempted to do the China Air route to SFO...there is also a East China Air flight within China that looks appealingly cheap...but I am wondering about safety...Thanks

[preahko]

China Air had a string of accidents there for a while--probably maintenance (or lack of it!) related--but they seem to have gotten their act together, they've been clean since 1999. I'm about to go over the 100,000 mile mark flying with them (hello, free roundtrip ticket!), I use them almost exclusively for my several trips each year back and forth US-Thailand.

 

preahko

[Topcatta]

My friend just came back from LOS in January and one of the motors stopped working. They got home safe though.

[dddave]

NOT clean since 1999; a China Airlines 747-200 disintigrated at 29k feet in May, 2002 after taking off from Taipei bound for HK; no survivors.

 

Turned out that the aircraft had an incident in the early 80's where the tail had touched ground on a takeoff and had caused a crack in the fusilage which was patched over with a piece of sheetmetal which eventually failed.

 

After the accident both the EU and the US threatened to withdraw China Air's landing rights unless they cleaned house; all sorts of totally non-qualified relatives of big shots in key maintainance positions were fired and a whole fleet of new aircraft aquired. So far,no new major incidents.

 

Just as an aside; the almost 30 year old 747-200 that disintrigrated though still being flown by CA, had been sold and was soon to be delivered to Orient Thai. (1-2 GO)

 

Two sites with safety info are www.aviation-safety.net and www.airdisater.com

[buffalo_bill]

** and one of the motors stopped working **

 

Did he also tell you how he found out ?

[matta330]

dddave said:

Just as an aside; the almost 30 year old 747-200 that disintrigrated though still being flown by CA, had been sold and was soon to be delivered to Orient Thai. (1-2 GO)

 

I know I'm niggling here, but one of the little things that drives me crazy (since I'm in the air more than home) is the mix up with Air China of Mainland China (CA) and China Air of Taiwan (CI) which happens frequently. The above incident was a CI aircraft.

 

If you are flying from the US to BKK via Taipei, that is China Air (CI). As ddave noted above while the carrier has gotten better safety wise, they are still having issues. One of two carriers on my never fly list.

 

The same goes for Korean Air (KE). Their safety has improved dramatically and from what I hear, their service is excellent, but I still won't fly them due to their past record. This is the other carrier on my never fly list.

[preahko]

>As ddave noted above while the carrier has gotten better safety wise, they are still having issues.

 

you wanna qualify that bold statement? what "issues" are they still having? and what is your documentation for said issues?

 

as I said, I've flown around 100,000 miles with them since around 2000, and never had a problem. I really do think they have gotten their act together.

 

let's not forget, air travel on ANY airline--yes, even lao aviation, haha--is safer than anything you're gonna do on the ground, especially those thai VIP buses where the drivers are all guaranteed on speed, let alone your average "motosai," where they're also drunk on leo beer...

 

let's just think about how many commercial airplanes are taking off, landing and in the air at this very minute, worldwide, and how often they go down? in comparison with the vast number of flights, almost *never*...your average bargirl who pisses hundreds of baht every month away on lottery every month has a way better chance of hitting a number than an airplane has of going down...which is to say, virtually no chance at all!!

 

preahko

[buffalo_bill]

** and China Air of Taiwan (CI **

 

Which calls itself China Airlines , for the record.

 

I stopped using them years ago when they started to run planes into terrain on landing approach . Times have changed dramatically since they employed a consulting company , Lufthansa owned , which sacked one third of CI cockpit crew after unsuccessful refresher training . Just imagine that . Now they are perfectly safe I would think .

 

BuBi

[Guest]

Have flown them several times between BKK and SEA. Comfortable plane, reasonable service. Depending on the route, you might get a brand new A340, which is much more comfortable than the ancient 747 EVA flies on the same route (except to LAX which now has 777 service, which is among the best I've ever experienced).

[matta330]

preahko said:

>As ddave noted above while the carrier has gotten better safety wise, they are still having issues.

 

you wanna qualify that bold statement? what "issues" are they still having? and what is your documentation for said issues?

 

Notice that I said "issues" not "incidents." The issues still revolve around training their flght deck crew and getting them out of military mode and into proper cockpit resource management. Their incidence of canceled flights out of TPE to various SE Asian cities is also higher than rival EVA.

 

If you want some scoop from the pilot's perspective, here is a great link for you: http://www.pprune.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=45