While this has been a reliable rumor for a while, it’s finally official.
EVA Air will launch 4x weekly flights between Taipei and Houston as of July 1, 2015. They haven’t announced the exact schedule yet, though at nearly 8,000 miles one-way, this will be EVA Air’s longest route.
Furthermore, EVA Air plans on launching flights between Taipei and Chicago as of 2016, though the exact dates haven’t yet been announced.
This growth is perfectly logical on their part. EVA Air joined the Star Alliance in June 2013, and there’s no denying their membership has opened up a ton of valuable connection prospects, which allows them to serve markets that might not otherwise work.
Presently their US flights are to Los Angeles, New York JFK, San Francisco, and Seattle. Los Angeles and San Francisco are huge markets and great for connections, given that United has a large presence at both airports. Seattle has a huge Taiwanese population and is a big cargo route.
New York JFK is mostly an origin & destination market, since there aren’t many Star Alliance connection prospects out of there. I’m actually kind of surprised they haven’t transferred that flight to Newark, so that they can both serve NYC and have easy connections on United to other east coast cities.
That’s really where these two new flights add valuable. Not only are Houston and Chicago massive markets, but they’re also the two largest hubs of the Star Alliance’s largest airline. So I’m sure they’ll have no trouble filling up these flights, with decent yields to boot.
EVA Air 777-300ER business class
I’ve flown EVA Air business class several times, including:
- EVA Air Royal Laurel Class 777-300ER Taipei to San Francisco
- EVA Air Hello Kitty Royal Laurel Class 777-300ER Taipei to Los Angeles
- EVA Air Business Class A330-200 Tokyo Narita to Taipei
- EVA Air Business Class A321 Tokyo Narita to Taipei
EVA Air 777-300ER business class
They have a fantastic business class product with reverse herringbone seats. The seats, service, and drinks are great. The food leaves a bit to be desired, but then again virtually all of EVA Air’s longhaul flights are primarily at night.
EVA Air business class meal service
EVA Air award availability was amazing when they first joined the Star Alliance, though it has gotten progressively worse over time. Now they’re actually not making longhaul business class award space available to partner airlines more than ~90 days before departure. Still, within that time period award availability is generally pretty wide open.
I’ll post again when the flight opens for bookings, with information on what award availability looks like.
Do you plan on flying EVA Air’s new route between Houston and Taipei?
(Tip of the hat to Luke)
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