It's all hearsay.
The era of everyone across the country booming 20% each year seems to be over. Anything in the HNA Group is in the state of upside-down standstill. Finding out which airline is in the HNA Group is part of the game.
It's worth clarifying to one's self well and clear what the personal motivations behind really are. If you have a job that needs to be changed, and China comes on top of the options list being the best-suited choice with a margin, good. That angle will help enormously. And then it matters not much which airline, it's a lot of different shape - same taste affair.
If you have a job and just fancy going there for a better overall package [workhours / (time home * money)], chances of happy success are statistically less. The psycho-social demands are seriously tough. Resentment and displeasure are easy to settle in case you had some equivalent choices.
On a commuting roster, the location might be important. You want a direct flight between your base and home country or at least (easy to reach) rail-link from the Chinese airport of arrival to the operating base. Guess 2 hours in a car'd be fine too, worth about 80 USD one-way.
BJS has all the connections and reasonable prices. Shanghai is linked to the world neatly for twice the cash however. The rest is hit and miss, devils in the details everywhere.
I'd say you want a large base, and a big name-airline. Someone who's been dealing with foreigners for as long as possible, and is not a spin-off brand. You're a highly paid asset and might be exploited as such Aim for a more constitutionalized company, even if the training will be longer and more painful perhaps. Also, you definitely want to ask about "base days protection" or similar, not to be thrown around the empire with a suitcase at hand for full months at a time.
Whoever offers 182 off / y is worth looking at. Fixed 28 d / 28 d make sense. Not sure if 3wks/3wks are advertised anywhere outside HNA Group. After breaking off, the latest WestAir leaflet only offers 6w/3w or 20:10.
Last edited by FlightDetent; 8th Dec 2019 at 05:35.
Reason: WestAir update