I have followed Asian civil aviation for several years.
The problems they face are:
1. underfunded startup airlines (Indonesia, India)
2. energetic and not well-understood equatorial Pacific storms
3. uneven quality of candidates and training
4. Asian cultural issues in the cockpit, esp. S. Korea
5. demanding weather (monsoons) and terrain (low-viz)
The NTSB did a lot (well, everything) for the current safety of American airlines, but there's no comparable safety body in Asia.
So Asian airline safety should really be compared with Africa, not the West.
Re: "Asian cultural issues" and the tired old Malcolm Gladwell line about South Korean culture being unsuited to the cockpit, this post demolishes that pretty thoroughly.
The 2 big companies to watch for layoffs this year are Paypal and Yahoo. Could be thousands each.
Paypal is just grossly overstaffed.
Yahoo is under pressure from investors to return the Alibaba proceeds to investors and cut their staff in half. (Some investors would like Yahoo to shut down and sell their campus off. Yahoo has no value as a going concern.)
The problems they face are:
1. underfunded startup airlines (Indonesia, India) 2. energetic and not well-understood equatorial Pacific storms 3. uneven quality of candidates and training 4. Asian cultural issues in the cockpit, esp. S. Korea 5. demanding weather (monsoons) and terrain (low-viz)
The NTSB did a lot (well, everything) for the current safety of American airlines, but there's no comparable safety body in Asia.
So Asian airline safety should really be compared with Africa, not the West.