CRX,
I'm glad you are interested in Tianjin Airlines but there are clearly a few things that you aren't being told about.
I am a current 190 captain in Europe, and will be jobless shortly so this opportunity is one I am keen to progress.
If you are going to be jobless anyway then you have nothing to lose and you should give it a shot. There are a lot of Europeans in Tianjin.
My expectations are low
That's good! So you may actually have fun.
I would be trying for the month on / month off contract in order to keep my family living at home, and me still able to see them. Is this contract all it appears? Will I realistically get close to a month back home (allowing for travel of course).
There is no month on month off anymore as you describe. The contract is different as of this year. You have four months you can take a month off, and two months where you can take just three weeks off. Those two months are arbitrarily set by the company based on your simulator recurrent schedule. In addition, every February you are on a two week on and two weeks off schedule for one month in order to reverse the cycle of which months you are off. For example, you can't take Christmas off every year. This means you will need to buy seven round trip tickets per year, not six.
Of course you'll be making good money so you should be able to afford it. Don't forget to factor in an apartment. If you're lucky you can get a room mate and reduce living costs because you won't be spending that much time in your apartment anyway flying the E190.
The staff travel rates, are they 25% off or 75% off regular ticket price? I have seen both stated in various places...
This is only for domestic travel. I'm pretty sure anyway. The other thing is those are only discounts off a full fare ticket which is almost always more expensive than what you will pay online. AND...you must pay the full taxes on the ticket. In China ticket tax is something to the tune of 60%. So just ignore that....it sounds great when coming from a recruiter but it's useless. You can expect to buy tickets at retail cost (online discounts) or better yet any deals you can obtain with your current airline.
I understand contract is for 80 hours a month, do they genuinely pay $200 per hour over that or is it avoided by splitting the month as alluded to earlier in the thread?
This won't apply to you if you accept the month on/ month off schedule. There is no overtime for that schedule even if you somehow manage to go over 80 hours in 16 days (I have actually done this by the way). And yes, overtime is paid per calendar month, not scheduled month. Typically what you can expect is to fly about 60 hours per calendar month in a back to back schedule per rotation which comes to about 120 hours for each one month schedule spread over two calendar months...no overtime is paid. There is no limit and the 60 hours is approximate. As I said, sometimes it's possible to do 80 hours of flying in about two weeks.
Another thing is Chinese flight time and duty time regulations are not the same as ICAO standards so you can expect very long duty days that can exceed 14 hours back to back and occassionally more than eight hours of flying per duty day, especially on the E190 or A320.
Although such working days are common there are some days that go much easier of course. It's just that the average on time departure rate is around 50% so you are almost always late and exceed your schedule. The lines out of cities other than Tianjin tend to be a bit easier.
A lot of people do this and enjoy it but the ones that enjoy it the most are the ones who don't have as much experience flying for other airlines. You can certainly make a lot of money...more than just about any other flying job in a regional jet. To some people the money is enough to justify the challenges but to others it's not. Like I said, if you're out of work anyway it's worth a shot.