Bud Leon #1088 and others: ICAO has a handy tool for comparing air safety capabilities of different states at
http://www.icao.int/safety/Pages/USOAP-Results.aspx. It’s based on very thorough, independent audits.
Before making sweeping comparisons between Asian and “Western” safety regimes just note that Singapore is one of the few States with a near perfect score and China is almost as good. Malaysia is much on a par with Australia and well above the international norm. Sadly Indonesia lags badly and theirs is very recent audit. So I fly on AirAsia’s Malaysian registered planes but not on those of its associates.
Interestingly AirAsia X Indonesia was due to start direct flights between Melbourne and Bali on 26 December but postponed the service at very short notice. Does anyone know if there were problems with the airline’s technical readiness?