At the moment, saver level award availability across the Pacific is more limited than ever before, with one exception. Specifically, EVA Air has excellent business class award availability, but only if you book through the carrier’s own Infinity MileageLands program.
The good news is that these miles are potentially easy to come by. The bad news is that the process of booking through Infinity MileageLands might make you wish that you never even heard of the program. Let’s go over everything you need to know.
In this post:
Redeeming miles with EVA Air Infinity MileageLands
Some airlines release more award availability to members of their own frequent flyer program than to members of partner frequent flyer programs, and EVA Air is among those. While EVA Air has very little long haul business class award space through Star Alliance partners, availability through the Infinity MileageLands program is very good.
Before I share a rundown of why there’s value here, let me note that I’ve actually never booked an award directly through EVA Air Infinity MileageLands. While I’ve known about the program for a long time, the PITA factor of actually booking through the program wasn’t worth the hassle.
I think that has changed, now that EVA Air is basically the only way to reliably get award availability across the Pacific in business class. So if I get any details wrong, please correct me, as I’m planning a redemption through the program soon as well.
Earning miles with EVA Air is easy
So, if you don’t fly with EVA Air often and/or don’t live in Taiwan, how can you earn EVA Air Infinity MileageLands miles? The program partners with two US transferable points currencies:
- EVA Air is transfer partners with Citi ThankYou; transfers are at a 1:1 ratio, and transfers generally take one to two days
- EVA Air is transfer partners with Capital One; transfers are at a 2:1.5 ratio, and transfers generally take one to two days
As you can tell, using Citi ThankYou points is better than using Capital One miles, given the more favorable transfer ratio. Just note EVA Air’s strict mileage expiration policy — miles expire 36 months after they’re earned, regardless of any account activity.
EVA Air award pricing & availability
EVA Air Infinity MileageLands has competitive award pricing, and you can find the award chart below (note that this applies exclusively for travel on EVA Air metal).
I’ll specifically call out that a one-way business class award between North America and Asia costs 75,000-80,000 miles, depending on where you’re originating. This allows travel beyond Taipei if you’d like, so you could fly from Los Angeles to Taipei to Singapore for 75,000 miles, or from Chicago to Taipei to Bangkok for 80,000 miles.
You’re not allowed a stopover on a one-way award, but you are allowed a stopover on a roundtrip award, should you want to visit Taipei plus another destination in Asia. Stopovers require booking by phone, which adds another layer of adventure to the booking process.
EVA Air does pass on carrier imposed surcharges on awards, though they’re quite low, typically under $100 one-way for business class. So the fees shouldn’t be a reason to avoid this program. You’ll find that EVA Air often has two business class award seats available per flight.
When booking way in advance, I’m seeing award availability on almost every date, while when booking within a few months, I’m seeing award availability on maybe half of flights. That’s a generalization, of course, since there are lots of factors, but the point is that EVA Air has so much more transpacific saver level award availability than any other airline.
The EVA Air booking process is awful
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’m convinced that EVA Air’s online award booking process is intentionally awful. There’s just no other explanation I can come up with.
To search award availability through EVA Air, you first need to create an Infinity MileageLands account, which is free and instant. Make sure you note what your account number is, because it may not be emailed to you, and trying to recover it is a test in patience (and that’s being charitable).
Once you have an Infinity MileageLands account, you can search award availability at this link. If it’s just one person traveling, it’s fairly straightforward, so let’s start with that. You just enter your origin, destination, dates, and preferred class.
You’ll see availability for five days at a time. You’ll either see a particular date as “available” or “waiting.” The latter means that you would need to waitlist, and that there’s not award space available.
Even if you select a flight that shows as available, you’ll still see that it says “unconfirmed.” That can cause some confusion… is it available or unconfirmed? It’s my understanding that this simply means that it’s unconfirmed until you ticket, but you should expect that it’s available.
As you can see, this doesn’t show a price. However, if you select a specific flight, you’ll see the number of miles required listed (though it won’t display the taxes and fees unless you have enough miles in your account for a redemption).
This is straightforward enough, unless you want to redeem for someone else, or want to redeem for a companion. Then it gets more complicated. First of all, to look up award availability for multiple people, during the search process you’ll have to enter their membership number and password.
Then to actually book an award ticket that includes travel for someone else, you’ll need to go to EVA Air’s online service forms webpage.
You’ll need to complete the online service form, which you can then email to [email protected] (or you can fax if you prefer, which is actually what’s recommended by the airline, lol). This essentially authorizes you to use all your account functions online. This also prevents you from having to complete a nominee registration form, which is even more complicated. As you can tell, the whole process of booking an award for anyone other than the account holder can be a pain.
If at all possible, I’d recommend just booking awards out of separate accounts. In other words, if you’re traveling with your spouse and you each have a balance of Citi ThankYou points, ideally just transfer points to your individual Infinity MileageLands accounts, and book that way. It will save you a lot of hassle.
Avoid partner redemptions through EVA Air
In theory, EVA Air has attractive redemption rates on Star Alliance partners as well. For example, a transatlantic first class award will cost you 85,000 miles, or a round the world business class award will cost you 325,000 miles.
However, do yourself a favor, and avoid these redemptions. The frustration factor is just way too high, there are carrier imposed surcharges, and there’s a lot that can go wrong. That’s why I’m focusing specifically on EVA Air redemptions in this post. For partner redemptions, EVA Air’s Infinity Mileage Lands is arguably even more complicated than All Nippon Airways’ Mileage Club.
EVA Air business class is exceptional
Not only is the opportunity to redeem for EVA Air business class valuable because so many airlines don’t have much award availability across the Pacific, but it’s also great because EVA Air offers one of the world’s best business class products.
The carrier has a solid (but not exceptional) hard product, while the soft product is spectacular. And if you really want an adventure, fly the Chicago to Taipei route, where you can enjoy EVA Air’s epic Hello Kitty service.
Bottom line
EVA Air’s Infinity MileageLands program is underrated for the simple ability to get access to more EVA Air business class award space. While other Asian carriers have very little award space, EVA Air has plenty of availability, assuming you book through the carrier’s own program.
The good news is that redemption costs are attractive, at just 75,000-80,000 miles from the United States to Asia. Taxes and fees are also negligible. Furthermore, you can transfer points from Citi and Capital One (with Citi having a better transfer ratio).
The bad news is that that booking through EVA Air’s program is a pain, especially if you’re traveling with a companion. With other programs, you can transfer points from another currency, and five minutes later you have your ticket. With EVA Air’s program, expect the process to take days, and get ready for some potential frustration.
Even with this annoying process, I’d say this is still a great opportunity, given the value of a transpacific business class award.
What’s your take on redeeming miles through EVA Air’s program?
There is another pain point worth mentioning. I was searching their website for award travel next year and I had several options to explore but after searching different itineraries for 15 minutes, a message popped up stating that I have exceeded the search limit and my account will be invalidated for 24 hours. I had to wait a full 24 hours before I could search again so make sure you have an itinerary in mind.
So this mostly talks about buying your ticket with points. What about upgrading? We're running into a snag there. both tickets were booked and paid for on one account. We would like to upgrade from premium economy to business using points. there are 80k points in the account that booked the tickets ready to go. We go through the process and it gets to what appears is the last screen and the points seem too...
So this mostly talks about buying your ticket with points. What about upgrading? We're running into a snag there. both tickets were booked and paid for on one account. We would like to upgrade from premium economy to business using points. there are 80k points in the account that booked the tickets ready to go. We go through the process and it gets to what appears is the last screen and the points seem too low for 2 people and I don't see mention of my name (the companion) anywhere on that page and there is just a 'confirm' button. Not sure if this is the last screen or not but I"m afraid to click it and accidentally only upgrade one of the tickets! Is it still true that each account needs to upgrade separately? How/when do you choose seats and assure they remain together? I can't get through on the phone, unfortunately so any expereince in this matter would be very helpful! Thanks!
Thank you for this very helpful post. I was able to purchase an award ticket in business class (after transferring Citi miles) from Chicago to Okinawa (with a short layover in Tapei) for 160,000 miles and $376 in fees. The process DOES try your patience but the end result was worth it!
If I transfer miles from Citibank to EVA, are these considered "earned" miles?
Thanks in advance!
Just want to thank the site for this guide. We were able to get four tickets in J to Asia for next year through EVA by following this guidance.
I just recently went through a nightmare of booking 6 award tickets for EVA's Business class and, it gets even more complicated if you're trying to book for multiple people or if you try to take advantage of a points sale.
First of all, if you see at seat available for 75K points and you want to buy 75K points to buy the ticket, no dice. You need at least 50% of the points...
I just recently went through a nightmare of booking 6 award tickets for EVA's Business class and, it gets even more complicated if you're trying to book for multiple people or if you try to take advantage of a points sale.
First of all, if you see at seat available for 75K points and you want to buy 75K points to buy the ticket, no dice. You need at least 50% of the points to be "earned miles" as opposed to "purchased miles".
Even if you're booking with a companion, so for a total of 150K miles, say you have 75K earned miles in your account and buy an additional 75K thinking you can buy two tickets--nope. The companion also needs 50% of their share to be in their account as earned miles. And, no, you can't buy one ticket, transfer the remaining earned miles + purchased miles to the companion, as they won't be able to use them in conjunction with one another.
Furthermore, if transferring points to someone on your nominee list--you *cannot* combine points. In other words, if I have 40K earned miles and my dad transfers me 35K earned *or* purchased miles, there is no way for me to use those miles that he transferred to me alongside my own points. The only way to use someone else's miles is if they transfer you enough to cover the cost of the *entire* fare or upgrade.
Anybody you transfer miles to or from creates a "sub-account" within your own account. So when reviewing your balance you have your own purchased and earned miles, then if someone transfers you either, it'll show as "Earned miles from x person" and "Purchased miles from x person", so if you try transferring 75K "earned" miles from 3 different people, for example, still no dice--as it doesn't all pool into one bucket of earned miles from transfers, each user that sent you the miles has their own bucket in your account. Even if you transfer from person 3 to person 2 to person 1, the miles are always attached to the sub-account of the person that initially transferred the miles.
I booked it through aeroplan and that was also a test In patients. Had to call to finalize both legs.
FWIW, I booked EVA biz for next April via AC Aeroplan, HKG-TPE-SEA with 3 day stopover in Taipei, for 80k (75k + 5k for stopover). It was booked entirely through one online session and much easier than anticipated, so I am glad I did not have to deal with EVA's website.
I went through that convoluted process, found flights I wanted, but didn't press the "more detail" button, so I didn't know all the flights were waitlisted.. Transfered my points, started the booking, then at the end of the booking just before paying it says it's waitlisted.. this is infuriating, 20000 points lost in oblivion.. Tried for 3 weeks to call the center, unable to get through. I'll try by email and see how that goes..
I swear Lucky that you’ve been snooping on my computer. I’m headed to Palau and I worked this out the other day, combined and moved Citi pints to Eva and just today booked the space. It’s as you described although I got a hold of a live BR agent using the LA 310 number. She checked the award space and confirmed the miles needed before I moved my miles which took 1 1/2 days.
Reading this and scratching my head. Just flew EVA Royal Laurel ten days ago, ICN- HKG, booked thru UA website as a redemption for 33k miles+$33.90. How was I able to book this flight thru UA website, and how was it so cheap?
You mentioned that usually they releases two seats per flight. However, when I tried to book three seats it still saying available, but of course, it says the seats will not be confirmed untill the end of the process. Would it be possible that it says available at first, and then put all three seats on wait-list at the end of the process?
For years pre-pandemic, I was able to easily book EVA J class with ANA miles if I booked 9-10 months in advance, it was 95K + $200-300 surcharge for a roundtrip ticket and I was even able to make a stop in TPE for a few days on the return. Now, you don't even see any seats on EVA in any class when you search on ANA's website. I surmise that it will take a few years before everything returns to pre-pandemic.
Given Taiwan’s recent desperate efforts to attract more visitors post-Covid, you’d think ANA would help return its former availability on EVA business. Taiwan no longer has mainland Chinese visitors these days and is offering all sorts of discounts. I guess ANA is waitlisting/blocking its own award business seats and blocking EVA’s to make more cash.
Just a data point from my own booking back in May. They seem to have an issue with the credit card authentication part when paying for the award fees. Booking will somewhat shows successful after the transaction and you'll get your PNR but it won't be 'confirmed' until the payment actually goes through. You'll then need to go through the song and dance trying to call in and process the credit card transaction again through a link that the agent sends to your email.
The staggering thing is that Eva Air booking is only available by telephone like 9 - 5;30 Mon - Fri
I wanted to change a flight online on a weekend, but it objected for no obvious reason and it was impossible to talk to anyone at Eva Air in any part of the world. Simply incredible.
Hey Ben,
Another datapoint is if you transfer miles to a third person, EVA cannot merge the mileage. I.e, your companion has 25k miles and you transfer 50k miles for a j ticket they cannot issue a ticket.
You know EVA trans-Pacific on its own metal availability is good when a Chinese bank announced transfer bonus on them, it was bombed by people including miles brokers and have to end just a few days later.
Transpacific availability will probably suck until this administration allows more US-China flights. According to Skift, there are only 24 weekly flights now vs 350 pre pandemic. So instead all this traffic must connect through Japan and such (maybe less so through TPE). This explains why award availability from Japan-US sucks, but Japan-elsewhere in Asia seems pretty wide open.
Another huge problem is trying to contact the N.A. call center. It's IMPOSSIBLE! I tried for days and when you call the recording says all lines are busy and then disconnects, you can't even hold. If you read online flyertalk etc, many suggest you call TPE,HKG,SIN etc., I tried but they said because my online ticket was issued starting in the US and priced in USD any changes need to be made through the US call center. Good luck getting through.
I think the best way to use EVA miles is for upgrade… upgrade availability is way better than award seat … (by the way UA and AC miles are great for upgrading for BR flight too )
Also once you activate your online service .. you can add nominee which require a calendar day and you can transfer miles to nominee but your transferred miles is not combinable with nominee’s own miles.
Could someone elaborate on the odds of the waitlist clearing? Is there a pattern, or is it completely random and does it usually clear or not?
Definitely a bit alarmed by the comments saying that "available" doesn't necessarily mean available... not sure why it has to be so hard.
FWIW in terms of transpacific availability, I've had great luck booking China Airlines awards to TPE from the West Coast and Vancouver via Virgin...
Could someone elaborate on the odds of the waitlist clearing? Is there a pattern, or is it completely random and does it usually clear or not?
Definitely a bit alarmed by the comments saying that "available" doesn't necessarily mean available... not sure why it has to be so hard.
FWIW in terms of transpacific availability, I've had great luck booking China Airlines awards to TPE from the West Coast and Vancouver via Virgin and Flying Blue, lots and lots of availability.
The award wait-list process is a hoot, too. You can start it online though you aren't actually on the waitlist until you call it for the list add to be processed. If the waitlist never clears you have to call in and pay a fee to get your miles back. Lately the US call center (Los Angeles), which has great agents of you can reach them, has been set to auto we are too busy, call back later, disconnect mode.
Available doesn't mean it's actually available. The only way to make sure is to call in. This is coming from a EVA Gold member. As a rule, Asian FFPs are invariably frustrating, with IT systems that seem to come from the turn of the century.
There is no need to submit the nominee form to [email protected]. After the online service is activated, you can go to "nominee list management" to add your recipents.
@ Cs -- Thanks for clarifying that! Updated the post to add that.
I booked ord to tpe to han in Feb 2024 on "available" date 2 months ago. After booking my ticket is waitlisted.... I search for the same date and still shows available. I log on every week and am still waitlisted.....
Definitely recommend booking that route through Flyingblue. Only 55K on most dates in J via Paris.
Any idea why it's so cheap at 55k when connecting through paris? I'm assuming this is because of the cdg-han leg? since transatlantic savers are generally at 55k, if connecting in cdg to cities like tpe or tokyo the price goes to dynamic.
Thanks for posting this, I might book this route between US-Asia in the future. 55k with FB bonuses is a steal.
You forgot to mention the other problem that it shares with a number of other Asian airlines. Its miles expire in 3 years with no option to extend them.
@ Tony -- Good point, thanks! I updated the post to reflect that.
Ben while not your fav programm, award flights on Eva Air are readily available on Lufthansa's Miles & More. I redeemed TPE-MUC for 71k Miles and just €80 in taxes. Easy peasy.
@ InceptionCat -- Good to know, thanks. For those of us in the US, Lufthansa miles are even harder to earn than EVA Air miles. :-/
Do you mean that M&M has the same availability? That hasn't been my experience.
I was looking for flights around Easter next year and was rather surprised to find availabilty almost every single day. The abilitiy to select seats on M&M / LH website made things even easier. The BR website is something else..
Ben, if you think that the partner and companion booking process is complicated, wait until you have to deal with them to cancel or change an award ticket. Never again.
@ Up Up & Away -- Definitely seems like a program to avoid for speculative bookings!
@Ben Schlappig - perhaps the convoluted nominee process is meant to deter mileage consolidators from gaming their program and prevent them from selling premium award tickets.