Redeem Miles For EVA Air Business Class: Here's The Trick

I LOVE flying EVA to Asia, and think their program is extremely underrated by most travel bloggers (who appear to tend to focus more on US-Europe awards).
One caveat/warning is that the mileage from cancellations do NOT immediately post back in your account. There is a substantial lag time. I could be mistaken on this, but I think if you cancel online, you have to call to request that the miles be reinstated to your account.
If you want to change your award flight, do not cancel and re-book; call EVA and jump through the hoops to change it. It takes a little more time, but better than having to transfer in additional points/miles (which is what I had to do when I made that mistake).

I've recently done what's described above, as well as waitlisted (FAIL) and cancelled. I agree with Ben's instructions and admonitions. I was booking for one traveller who isn't myself. Note that the booking process includes a warning that the traveller must present the same credit card used in the online booking process. In our case, we paid the TaxFees with the traveller's card, in case they enforced this. On his Da Nang DAD-originating itinerary, they did not. Our booking was made a month before travel and involved lots of searching, and a compromise: wanted destination YYZ, settled for ORD. Worth it all, since EVA has by far the most convenient routes/schedules DAD to North America and as Ben says accurately, truly excellent service. Worth the bad bad bad online process.

Same experience. Good advice. I'd go further: as with LifeMiles, so with EVA: book simple trips, only when you're sure. You won't enjoy cancelling/changing.

I booked an “available” award last year for my wife (through my wife’s eva air account) 6 months in advance. Post booking - this showed up as unconfirmed and I didn’t get confirmation as late as 1month out so had to book through alternatives.

Perhaps it changed by now but I am wary of booking “available” awards now..

Awards don't come with free business class wifi.

I got a United award on EVA earlier this year and no fees were charged. Not sure why. It was a one way back to the US.

The only reason to book EVA award flights with BR miles is the expanded availability of award flights EVA made available to its own members. BR miles are also very difficult to accumulate. Citi Thankyou points are practically the only avenue (and it isn't economical to transfer Capital One miles to BR). You can't even transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to EVA (as you can to almost any other major airlines in the world).

I downloaded, filled out, and emailed the Online Services form to the email address you provided in this article two weeks ago, and I have yet to receive any confirmation or response from Eva Air, and it is still telling me that I cannot nominate anyone because I have not applied for Online Services. The US phone number repeatedly hangs up on me. Any ideas how I can get Eva Air to allow me to book for my spouse as my nominee/companion?

What phone number do you call to get EVA to answer?

Does Eva Air only offer 1 business award seat for each flight? It seems very difficult to find two seats

Call the Taiwan one. They never answer the US ones.

I booked an EVA award for two back in Nov based on the previous version of this post. had to settle for PE on one leg since I had a date change and it was kind of close in. These types of posts are why OMAAT is the best. It’s a bit of a hassle to get everything set up, but when you get a $5000 ticket for 130k points it’s totally worth it.

I’d like to book for 2 other passengers (not myself), they are older and don’t have credit card points.
Can I be able to nominate 2 others to accomplish this? Or do they require me to travel with them?

Thanks for the post!

I redeemed one of these one-way business fares using Citi TYP two weeks ago, agreed it was fantastic.

BTW, I live about 6 miles from one of their offices. If you happen to live near a US Eva ticket office, they can take care of all the pain of (never talking with them on the phone / dealing with the multi-person redemption), and they are very friendly. Just budget about 30-40 minutes, since they typically have to make some calls to HQ to sort things out.

@Tom - I asked them about that when I visited their office. They told me they're short-staffed in all the US offices since Covid, nobody ain't got time to answer the phone.

Last week I was approved for Online Services in about 48 hours. I faxed the form to the Los Angeles office AND emailed it. I'm not sure which one got approved. The approval email arrived on a Saturday at 4pm Pacific time. After I nominated my wife, it took another 36 hours before the nomination cleared.

I was able to book 2 seats in J on 1/24/2024 from LAX to TPE - confirmed and ticketed.

On the form, who is deputy signature and applicant signature?

Can I book flight for my parents if I am not traveling with them on same flight?

Does each persons book ticket for have to create Eva online account?

I emailed the online service form email and got a response within 48 hours but this is what they said:

In order to ensure the safety of members' rights and personal information, we have received the latest notice from the member business management department, please take the Evergreen/UNI AIR international flight segment and have mileage accumulation, and then apply for network activation, thank you! If you have any questions, please call the Taiwan or local reservation hotline.

Does this mean that I can't be approved for online services since I've never flown with EVA in the past? I currently have 1,000 miles in my account from when I signed up.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.. currently in Taiwan and trying to figure out a way home..

Hi, may I ask if I were to redeem a ticket with stop over , do I just utilize the award site to check availability for each of the segment and then call Eva air reservation to book and issue ticket ?
How is your experience in calling the Taiwan reservation center? I never was able to connect the US office. Thanks

I've redeemed miles on 28 different carriers, and up until my recent retirement, flew 100K-200K miles a year. EVA is easily the worst program to deal with on the phone (nobody answers), through the website (their program is nothing like anyone else's, and in a bad way), and with their policies (it was not obvious that I had "booked" a waitlist seat, and could get now updates for over 6 months...it wasn't until the day of the flight that they cancelled my flight because they didn't have an award seat to give me, and then they charged me $50/segment to put the miles back in my account). This is a program to avoid at all costs.

Few things: Ben does a good job of describing how difficult it is to book business class using miles, but there are more things to know.

First, the taxes/fees aren't negligible (at least to me). They are $180-200 per adult, and a whopping $650 for an infant in lap (which is 50% more than a similar ticket on Singapore, for example). We paid this because we want to try EVA business with our toddler, but yeah...never again. (They also bait-switched as we were originally quoted $350 but changed it $650 bc it was a different flight...)

Second, the process of transferring miles between friends/family is excruciating and slow. Budget 4-5 business days to get everything squared away, and expect to FAX documents or email PDFs. The system seems like it hasn't changed in 20 years.

Third, expect to wait 45-60 minutes to get someone on the phone. I probably talked to the entire EVA staff in North America at some point.

Fourth, make SURE your ticket AND your actual account are made/booked with your exact full name including all middle names. If you have a discrepancy, you have to fax or email a ridiculous form to make the change (while sending in a copy of your passport for verification). Please do this when you first sign up for the program.

Fifth, if you would like a personal consultation on how to actually book EVA via points/miles, I'm happy to guide you for a fee of $100 (I'm just kidding...) Or if someone from EVA is reading, please contact me so I can help you design a better more user-friendly program that travelers expect in the year of our Lord 2024.

Sixth, and finally, the 1,000 'free miles' you get for "signing up" cannot be used for your award ticket. So don't transfer 74K and expect to use those miles for an award that costs 75K miles. You can't. And they don't tell you until you try booking. So what can you do with those free 1K miles? I'm honestly not sure. Thanks for nothing, EVA!

The one good thing about this entire situation is that because it's so hard to book, you're very likely to find a ticket on EVA that works for you.

ugh! I live close to their LA location, I should've done this. next time!

Does EVA not release last minute business seats anymore? I used to see availability on united.com then book it using ANA points.

Post for the group - the new email address seems to be [email protected] based on my recent call with them to activate my online services access. Thanks again Ben for the great content

Thank you for the details! How do you know if EVA has 2 or more award spaces for the flight you need? Can you somehow see the available seats before you book? We're a family of 3 and we don't want to split, but I don't want to go through all the hassles if they don't have 3 award spaces on the same flight. Thank you so much for your input!

This is supremely helpful. There's one of these in Rosemont right across 294 from ORD so I'll absolutely be just taking the blue line from downtown if I need to do an EVA redemption. Seems impossible to do on the phone or online, especially because the EVA redemption I'd want to do is for me and another person going ORD-TPE-BNE which throws up errors on the website. Hopefully the ticketing office could piece them together into a multi-city.

How do I thank this guy for the great and thorough post on the EVA program? This is awesome!!!

I tried for 2 days and gave up...just unreal and what a wasted of time..

Just an update here, I was able to use the free 1K miles for award tickets for me and another person, so maybe something has changed.

Are seat upgrades available via this process too? The EVA site has been so complicated to navigate. Additionally, must you transfer the miles to the companion before booking? I'm used to just booking on my capital one travel portal for anyone without any additional steps, so just wanted to confirm if anyone else has some input. Thanks!!