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EVA Air–Taiwan’s second largest carrier–has announced that it will join the Star Alliance June 18, 2013. This is welcome news that will provide another option to Asia via EVA’s Taipei hub with Star Alliance miles.
EVA is already a non-alliance partner of United, so you can already use your United miles to book EVA, which may be United miles’ best option to Asia.
I wanted to write a post about how to search for award space on EVA at evaair.com, but One Mile at a Time has written up the search process perfectly, and I have nothing to add.
I did some searches today, and I found excellent business class availability for this summer to Taipei from Los Angeles and New York, with much worse availability from San Francisco.
Unfortunately due to the difficulties in searching EVA space, I didn’t do as many searches as I’d like to have a full picture of space. But I feel comfortable saying that EVA probably has the most business class space left to Asia this summer of any United partner. This is unsurprising since few United agents or people with United miles know about EVA Air, meaning the space is unlikely to be searched and ticketed.
If united.com adds the ability to search EVA space, the award space could dry up. But for now, flat bed business seats to Asia are wide open with United miles.
EVA flies to these destinations from Taipei.
EVA maintains a focus city in Bangkok with these direct flights.
Yes, these flights are indeed direct!
Bonus
According to wikipedia, it’s pronounced E-V-A Air, which was not my first guess.
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Now we can use our miles for aspirational redemptions like this: http://evakitty.evaair.com/en/ !!!
Extra bonus –
When you sign up for EVA’s Evergreen Club, you get 1000 bonus miles.
Un-bonus –
$399 in taxes per person for an award redemption?
FWIW, they changed the fare classes they use for awards as part of their efforts to be ready for *A integration in a few weeks. They now use X, E and I for economy, premium economy and business. The X and I are standard within the alliance so that makes sense.
That’s good. A little less confusion for agents.
locals in taiwan always pronounce “eva” not “e-v-a”
“QANTAS” is an acronym too but you don’t say it as “Q-A-N-T-A-S”
I took Eva air to Taipei in January and put points in United already even the star alliance date is not official. But I only got 11k miles for round trip. Another nice way to go to Asia is via Hawaiian air -there is direct fly to Korea now and there will be direct fly to Taipei starting this summer.
Hi guys,
I just got some luck on booking a United award ticket on EVA Airways Flight.
SGN-TPE-LAX-IAH from August ….. This was all book on (I) Class …. and was all done and confirmed within 30 min of calling in….
Just have to make sure the agent on the phone know what your calling about and make sure you tell them that they are in the non-aligned star alliance. also call the United Star Alliance help desk they are really better than the regular line.
Tax was about 40 dollars.
I am super excited to try their product.
Awesome trip coming up for you!
hi Jackson, could you please walk me through how you book your EVA flight. I want to book the same route as yours from lax-tpe-sgn and same on the return in July-13.. if you can send me an email please. many thanks.. choiklu@hotmail.com
I did some test calls and the only agents who knew how to do this was the Alliance desk, everyone else failed miserably and gave totally wrong information. However, one thing I noticed is that the award availability on Eva’s website does not match with United. Even when United can see the bucket available, a lot of times Eva doesn’t confirm it and rejects the seat. I know Eva is joining Star Alliance next month, but is there any way for United to call Eva to get the seat booked? I’ve tried to ask and they said “not possible.”
[…] a search and found these two links on using UA points for upgrades, but not specifically for US: https://milevalu.wpengine.com/eva-air-taiwan-…d-miles-today/ http://boardingarea.com/onemileatati…n-eva-airways/ So from what I understand I need to […]
Just tried to confirm and ticket a reward ticket on Star Alliance (Lufthansa) using EVA miles – they ask for more than 670 USD in taxes !! I can buy a ticket on Expedia for less than 900 USD, including taxes, or use UA miles and pay less than 50 USD in taxes and fees.
What is wrong with these guys ?? – from now on I will insist to have my company book a different airline for my trips to Taiwan. By the way – I am, guess, I was, EVA Gold …
Most foreign award programs collect fuel surcharges on award flights that make economy tickets a bad deal. You should redeem for business/first class tickets or better yet, earn United or US Airways miles since they don’t collect fuel surcharges on award flights.