Expat Pilots in Southeast Asia
 

Hi everyone,

I am a young A320 pilot who's considering to move to Southeast Asia within the next 6 months. As of now, I've got Lion Air (Indonesia), Air Asia (Malaysia), and Vietjet (Vietnam) interested in my candidacy.

I would be extremely grateful if any of you could share their work/life experiences and/or recommendations in this thread.

Many thanks in advance!

Question is what are you looking for exactly? Savings, career progression, life experience, love? Each one of the companies you mention will give you different things in different environments. Without more input from your side is difficult to offer any advice.

Do a search here on expats in Southeast Asia. My first question is why do you want to do this to yourself when there are so many quality jobs available in the west?

Government of Malaysia only allows Air Asia to hire local First Officers (*no expat First Officer positions).

Lion Air doesn't operate A320, maybe you meant Batik Air.

If you're an FO, I don't think you can easily fly in Indonesia, as now they are flooded with jobless fresh graduate CPL-IR thus, the government is restricting the requirement (and recruitment) for expat FO's to accommodate the local surplus.

Working condition? Well, Lion Air group doesn't have the best working condition out there, but from my experience it is a tiny bit better in Lion Air than Batik Air. The rostering, dayoff, annual leave etc. will be the same, but, in Lion Air (especially expat) you will be more welcomed by your colleagues.

It is far far better if you come here when you already on the left seat.

Air Asia doesn't hire expat FOs. Therefore, you're talking about Lion Air and Vietjet. Therefore, you're talking about two of the worst and ****tiest pay-to-fly schemes on the planet, that will get your CV promptly thrown in the trash by a very large percentage of chief pilots, if your intention is to return to the UK after you've done your hours.

My advice to you is simple, don't do it, even by the standards of pay-to-fly, there's a lot better schemes out there than either of those two

There is no p2f program in Lion and they dont hire expat FO. I can't say about Vietjet

If you really want to do the SEA thing then Cebu Pacific would probably be your best bet for a low time A320 guy plus you dont have to pay them to work!