Star Alliance Member EVA Air Reveals Brand New Business Class for Boeing 787s

Taipei-based Star Alliance member EVA Air has one of the world’s best business class products. They should be on everyone’s radar because they also frequently have very good award availability from their US gateways and offer good connectivity into Asia.

Already they offer great seats — reverse herringbone that’s similar to what Cathay Pacific has — but they take things a step beyond with pajamas, pre-order meals, great champagne, and quality amenity kits. And their service is top notch. The only business class product in the world I’d clearly choose over EVA Royal Laurel Class is Qatar Airways QSuites.

EVA is especially known for their Hello Kitty jets which are just fun — and get the details down to inflight meals and even the toilet paper in the lavatories.

EVA Air will take delivery of its very first Boeing 787-9 on October 2. The aircraft will feature 26 new business class seats and 278 seats in economy.

They worked with BMW’s Designworks on the look and feel of the business class seats.


Credit: EVA Air

The seats are 23 inches wide with flat beds extending 78 inches, and feature 18 inch HD touch monitors, “the latest noise-canceling headphones, extra-large fold-out tables for dining or work, auxiliary outlets and USB ports for recharging personal devices or accessing files from Media Player, Photo Viewer and PDF Reader.”

EVA shared this video tour of their new Boeing 787 Royal Laurel (business) class cabin.

Notably while economy is still economy of course EVA Air does invest in comfort elements. Teague provided design for their Recaro economy seats with “leather headrests that adjust by as much as 6 [inches] and added customized neck supports” that can be angled in 6 directions. There are 12 inch HD touch monitors at each seat.

The airline will take delivery of four 787-9s and then accept its first Beoing 787-10 in the second quarter of 2019. They anticipate delivery of 24 Boeing 787s by 2022.

This new product will take its maiden commercial flight by the end of October, flying Taipei – Hong Kong. When their second 787-9 starts flying commercially they’ll “extend the plane’s services to Japan” and then add more destinations as they take on additional aircraft.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. @Gary, so based on your blog, the 787-9’s seem to be regional (Asia wise). Will the 787-10’s be of longer range/distance (eg. USA)?

  2. @RF, thanks for the info! So sounds like these new seats won’t apply to any flights from USA to Asia anytime soon.

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