There’s amazing availability to and from Asia using Star Alliance member EVA Air.
EVA Air offers a business class product that’s four abreast on the Boeing 777-300ER. That means all aisle access. The seat is reverse herringbone and very similar to what Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, and others offer. It’s one of the best business class seats in the sky in my opinion.
And it’s wide open for 4 passengers from all North American gateways starting in February.
They offer pre-order meals in their business (“Royal Laurel”) class and onboard internet.
Starting in February award space is wide open on all of EVA’s North American routes for 4 passengers in both economy and business class. United’s website award calendar shows dates where business class is available with dots, and economy with dashes. This space matches what Aeroplan is showing as well.
Only San Francisco’s availability, while still good, is limited. Other cities have space almost every day, and in both directions, though Taipei – North America is a little bit tighter.
Here’s New York JFK – Taipei for four passengers, with business and economy available across the board.
The same is true in the other direction, Taipei – New York JFK.
Availability is amazing out of Houston.
Houston gets EVA Air’s Hello Kitty service.
Availability is amazing out of Los Angeles.
You’ll find the same scenario for Toronto and for Chicago as well.
Although here’s what I mean by ‘tighter’ from San Francisco for four passengers:
You can use flights to Taipei as a great jumping point to Northeast Asia, China, and Southeast Asia using EVA’s extensive route network:
Mileage costs:
- United charges 80,000 each way between the US and North or South Asia for business class awards. Chase points transfer to United.
- LifeMiles charges 75,000 each way between the US and North Asia and 78,00 between the US and South Asia for business class awards. LifeMiles frequently sells miles cheap.
- Aeroplan charges 75,000 each way between the US and Asia south to Hong Kong, and 77,500 each way between the US and South Asia for business class awards. Membership Rewards points transfer to Aeroplan.
Get booking!
(HT: Don’t Call the Airline)
It’s nice that there are 4 biz class seats on these flights, but in the real world, how many people are sitting on, say, 640,000 United miles? Even with manufactured spending, that’s not a realistic number to obtain for 99.9% of people who might be interested. There would have to be a way to buy the miles at a good price (say a penny a piece) to make this relevant.
@iahphx i think you’d be surprised, plus chase transfers to united and it’s bookable of course with amex points to other star carriers as well or book one way and use miles in another program/alliance for the other direction plus of course not everyone needs 4 seats, the point is even 2 seats are bookable from feb onward most of the time from most gateways
I think the point is availability. Unless I miss my guess, you won’t be required to redeem four award seats at a time. Momondo right now lists EVA business JFK-TPE @$2950US cash at a random November date. LifeMiles are on sale a couple times a year, sometimes dipping below 1.5 cents, buy in @75K for $900US. Sounds like a good deal to me. And it’s not difficult to exploit the Chase lineup to amass United miles at about the same rate.
iahphh you can buy UR points at just over half a cent if you have the Chase Ink Plus and but $300 staples visa gift cards for 308.95 . That’s 1544 UR points for 8.95
I’m flying my family of four in first class from DFW-HKG in Nov because Gary posted about wide open availability on AA. These types of posts help a lot of people! Many times it’s easy to find one or two seats, but not four.
Well, obviously, if you worked hard at it and did every trick in the book (like maximizing manufactured spending on an Ink card, and had your spouse do the same, while also signing up for a bunch of other cards) you could generate 640,000 UA miles in about a year. But if you did that, would you then blow all of them on one “family airfare” to Asia? I suppose some might. But I think that’s a very small universe of people.
Nice bonus is EVA has very low taxes, so I wouldn’t mind burning some MR points via Aeroplan or Lufthansa miles, even speculatively. Although Aeroplan has rapacious change fees, so Lufthansa is better for that.
Can anyone speak to the difference of Asiana Business on an A380 (kind of thinking being on upper deck would be cool) versus EVA Air (non Hello Kitty plane)? I already have a flight booked AUS-SFO-ICN-SIN in February using United miles in business. The SFO-ICN portion is on an A380 and currently they only have economy available on the ICN-SIN leg although I’m hoping business will open up. I’m trying to decide if I should switch to AUS-IAH-TPE-SIN on EVA, which is available completely in business and would be an evening departure, rather than a morning one on the Asiana flight I’ll have to pay the $75 award change fee and the total travel time is about 3 hours less on EVA. I believe the EVA air flight doesnt have first class so I’ve read the business class is pretty nice. I dont fly business very often so want to book the best experience! Thanks!
Sign up bonuses of 100 k on multiple cards, manufacturing points and bonus categories all make this attainable.
Stop the whining.
You don’t need to fly eva roundtrip. you can book it one way and fly OW or ST the other way using other miles you got.
My friends and I like to travel together so post like this are very helpful. Thank you. worldtravelguy on instagram