Star Alliance member EVA Air has opened up award space wide for available dates in 2024 on most of their North America routes. This means nearly every day at least through March, and in many cases it means that if you are looking for 8 award seats, and want everyone on the same flights, now is your chance.
I’m not seeing this kind of award space from New York JFK, but you can fly to Asia from Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and more – and of course connect beyond Taipei – on one of the better airlines.
You can even use this space to get to Australia, a notoriously difficult award to secure. Book through a program like Air Canada Aeroplan for a stopover in Taiwan, get some great dumplings, before heading Down Under.
Some example calendars of what award availability looks like for two passengers, from the United.com website. Dates that say “88K” as mileage cost means there is partner saver award space non-stop on EVA Air. The actual cost of the award will vary depending on the miles you’re using to book the space.
Chicago – Taipei:
Houston – Taipei:
Los Angeles – Taipei:
San Francisco – Taipei:
Now, this last was availability for two business class award seats from San Francisco. Let’s look at what availability looks like for 8 passengers:
Some ways to book these awards:
- United: From the calendars below you can see that United charges 88,000 miles each way to Taiwan, the exact pricing will vary based on the region you’re ultimately traveling to. You can transfer Chase and Bilt points to United and there are no surcharges.
- Air Canada: Aeroplan charges 75,000 miles each way for business class from Chicago and other available destinations to Taipei (you’re staying under 7,500 miles flown). Longer-distance travel costs incrementally more and stopovers cost more as well. There are no surcharges. You can transfer Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt points to Aeroplan.
- Avianca LifeMiles: charges 90,000 miles each way between the U.S. and Asia with no surcharges. They often sell miles cheap and have transfer bonuses, and American Express, Citi and Capital One transfer to LifeMiles.
- ANA: charges just 95,000 miles roundtrip for business class between the U.S. and Taiwan. Connect further into Asia and the roundtrip cost is 136,000 miles. You pay surcharges. They’re an Amex transfer partner, but points don’t transfer instantly so there’s always a risk that the space won’t be there when the miles are available for redemption.
EVA Air’s seat is good but a bit dated. Soft product is outstanding from food to wine to amenities. And service is excellent as well, in my experience, though there may be language barriers for Americans with some crew.
Turkish charges 67.5k and does pull it up but I got an error on payment.
@ Omar. I got an error on payment using United miles when I tried to book 4 business class seats through UA. I called and found out that there was only one seat left at saver pricing. I picked a different day and it worked. It seems that partner space may not show up in real time. I’m guessing it refreshes about once per day. So you may be alright if you try other flights or days.
Booked all the way to Bangkok. 3 of us on Aeroplan
Thanks for the heads up!
I booked to DPS, and ended up using UA miles, 189K RT, as “insurance” in case I need to cancel the trip. Also, no ticketing fees, or other weird taxes, vs both Aeroplan and Lifemiles (either $50 or $90 extra in fees). I could not get the flights to show up using TK miles.
This is so far in the future, I’m sure schedule changes will happen, and it simply isn’t worth the stress & hassle dealing with Avianca (or Turkish) customer service. And I’m willing to pay a bit more in miles for a fully refundable booking.
Are these “Royal Laurel” 180 lie flat or one of the inferior biz class seats?
was able to book a few for 2023 but seems like i’m seeing a lot of phantom availability unfortunately with some of these especially in 2024. will get to the payment page before receiving the error saying payment cant be processed.
I am seeing “I” available on UA.com and also expert flyer but unable to complete the booking on UA.com – UA rez agents cannot see “I” either. Aeroplan does not show availability.
Ditto cannot book on United after getting past the seat selection to the checkout page. Also confirmed the same seats didn’t show on ANA, Avianca, or AeroPlan.
@Michael
Unfortunately, seeing the same phenomenon 🙁
It seems as if ALL of the availability was pulled at ~10:15 EST. Was just about to transfer points, when I noticed availability vanished, literally from one minute to the next.
Dead – BR pulled the rug.
EVA is rejecting payment. You can see the “I” inventory on UA.com but when you book, you get an error message “unable to complete transaction.”
Tried 3 different cards. All failed. MasterCard and VISA agents said the problem is with the merchant.
UA 1K desk couldn’t manually book my flights either. UA IT Help Desk agent said many customers were calling about failed payments.
88K miles for EVA in transpacific Biz Class – too good to be true.
EVA pulled the inventory. UA lets you get to the final step, but payment fails. This one is a goner!
Was the release done in error by BR? Otherwise why would they pull all the inventory? Ticketed seats safe or there a chance of them cancelling?
I flew EVA syd to Taipei then onwards to Tokyo a couple of weeks ago and thought the 787-10 product was brilliant. Great seat, decent legroom, storage etc. felt very private. And the service and food was amazing. Light years ahead of the old ANA product that I flew home.
Incidentally EVA had a ton of close in space available around asia.
I had the same issue of trying to book Eva air BC on Aeroplan. The phantom availability. But I kept trying and finally had success.
Farang Jai Dee – what time (approximately) did you succeed in booking your ticket? I tried (and failed) around 10PM PST on 5/9/23. UA kept showing the space available until I shut down my computer at 11PM PST…
I had a confirmed ticket on EVA from months ago but changed the date last night. But now my ticket is waitlisted. No one can confirm and I can’t change it back because my original ticket is “sold out”. There’s nowhere on the UA website said I would be waitlisted for this new flight. I would not have given up my confirmed ticket otherwise. Very unhappen and disappointed about it. Helpless at the moment.
Also, UA always has delay in updating their system. It would show available on the website, but never able to confirm. I had a few similar incidents like that. When I called, the agents said they could see it available on the website but not in their “other” system. Not helpful at all.
Eva Air pending payment leaves us with a state we cannot book another ticket and yet don’t know when the pending payment is finalised. Best is to avoid payment to Eva Air in the first place.
They opened up NY 2 days ago, but most of the tickets were gone in a day. I was one of those who got 2.