Why You Should Avoid China Airlines at All Cost

First of all, you must not confuse China Airlines with Air China as these two airlines are distinctively different corporate entities. China Airlines is the flag carrier of "Republic of China" (more commonly referred as Taiwan) while Air China is the flag carrier of "People's Republic of China" (more commonly referred simply as China or Mainland China).

Some shorts facts of the said airlines :

Country : Republic of China - Taiwan

Headquarters : Taipei, Taiwan

Hub : Taipei Taoyuan International Airport 

Founded : 1959

Chinese Registered Name : 中華航空公司  (中华航空公司)

Short Name : 華航  (华航)

Flight Code : CI

Contact Tower Callsign/Air Traffic Controller Callsign : Dynasty (flight number)

Country : People's Republic of China - China or Mainland China

Headquaters : Beijing, China

Hub : Beijing Capital International Airport

Founded : 1988

Chinese Registered Name : 中国国际航空公司  （中國國際航空公司)

Short Name : 囯航  (國航)

Flight Code : CA

Contact Tower Callsign/Air Traffic Controller Callsign : China (flight number)

Okay, back to the topic. Why did i ask you to avoid China Airlines in the first place ? Because it has one of the worst safety records in the world and many of its accidents are actually human error related. See below -

12/8/70 - CI206

~ Struck a ridge while landing at Taipei

~ 14 killed

20/12/71 - CI825

~ Blew up after a bomb on it exploded

~ 25 killed

19/2/1985 - CI006

~ Near crash, substantial damage to the aircraft

~ All survived

16/2/1986 - CI2265

~ Crashed in Makung, Penghu

~ 13 killed

26/10/1989 - CI(not available)

~ Crashed shortly after take-off in Hualian

~ 54 killed

29/12/91 - CI358

~ Cargo flight

~ 5 crew members killed

4/11/93 - CI605

~ Overran the old Hong Kong airport (Kai Tak) while landing during a typhoon

~ Aircraft was written off

~ All 396 passengers and crew survived

 

26/4/94 - CI140

~ Crashed while landing at Nagoya, Japan

~ 264 killed

16/2/98 - CI676

~ Crashed after a missed-approach at Taipei

~ 205 killed

22/8/99 - CI642

~ Flipped over while landing at Hong Kong Airport (Chek Lap Kok) during typhoon

~ 3 killed

25/5/02 - CI611

~ Aircraft suddenly broke up in mid-air while flying 35000ft above sea level on the way to Hong Kong from Taipei

~ Aircraft broke into several pieces mid-air, no chance of declaring mayday

~ All 225 onboard killed

~ Only 175 of those onboard were recovered and identified, the rest was never found.

20/8/07 - CI820

~ Caught fire shortly after landing at Okinawa, Japan.

~ All 165 passengers and crew survived

CI611 was the most high profile crash in China Airlines history. Below is the seat map of CI611 to Hong Kong from Taipei. White represents empty seats, yellow for those victims whose remains were never recovered, red for those victims whose bodies were recovered, dark gray is galley area (kitchen) and baby blue for lavatories (toilet).

Another must avoid airlines would be Korean Air but that's a different story. Basically our national airlines - Malaysia Airlines is very safe. It doesn't have any major air accident besides the crash in Tawau that killed 34 people in 1995 and also the plane that was hijacked in 1977 enroute to Singapore with all 100 onboard killed.