Government owned and fantastic airline are not two phrases that often go together,
but China Airlines is bucking that stereotype. We’ve got a full trip
report for this great little flight today, so let’s get into it, welcome to Taipei.
If you’d like to know the exact fare that I paid for my flight or my next five videos in queue,
please check out the description below and if you’re new here, hi there and
welcome to the channel, my name is Kevin. I think that the world needs a bit more
honest travel content these days, so I make airline trip reports,
high end hotel reviews and cruise ship tours as well, all without invitation.
I always film without the company’s knowledge and self-fund my trips to be sure I get a
true experience and give you nothing more than my personal honest unbiased opinion.
Can I just preface this entire trip report and get straight to the point for a moment.
Flying business class and first class is, of course, fantastic. But some of
the most refreshing experiences I’ve had in the air have been on short flights in economy,
why? Because you can’t imagine much that could actually be different.
How good could the seat be? How amazing can a basic economy meal taste? How much
attention could you possibly get in economy on a three hour flight? They’re all reasonably
questions- and they’re precisely why, this is my third ever perfect score on the channel.
There is quite simply, nothing to fault. Right now we are at Taipei’s Taoyuan
International airport, not to be confused with it’s city center sibling, Taipei Songshan Airport.
This is the primary hub for China Airlines as well as EVA Air and Starlux. The three of them
together, making Taipei one of the most comfortable places on earth to fly from.
For check in today I was at the Sky Priority lane due to Elite Plus status,
though the economy line wasn’t too long at all. When checking in, as I often do,
I asked if there were any cash upgrades available. And there were. To Premium Economy, the price was
$380 which has to be the single most overpriced cash upgrade I’ve heard of in quite some time.
Anyway, as we head through immigration and make our way to the departures haul. Let me
note one thing. Part of the reason why I got such great service today was because of elite status.
Some would argue that, that alone means giving them such a high score isn’t fair.
Let me explain why, I disagree. My SkyTeam status is with ITA Airways. I’ve never flown with them.
They gave me a status match from my Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Gold status. My KrisFlyer Gold
status wasn’t actually from flying though. During covid, they had a promotion to give Gold status
if you transferred 250000 points to them. Those 250000 points I earned from bonuses for signing
up for two credit cards. So, my point being, many people could have potentially done the same thing
and enjoyed the same service levels- It’s not like I spent $30000 on flights to get such status.
Anyway, let’s head to the China Airlines Business Class lounge for a bit.
The lounge itself is beautiful and ironically enough reminds me of the hotel from my last
video Hotel Proverbs in Taipei. There’s plenty of comfortable seating inside and
a great selection of food, including a noodle bar which is hand’s down, better than Cathay’s.
The only things the lounge is missing is a view.
So, China Airlines is a state owned carrier and also owns Mandarin Airlines and Tigerair Taiwan.
They had their first flight in the early 1960s and soon expanded internationally to Vietnam,
Hong Kong and Japan- connecting via Tokyo
to their first intercontinental destination, San Francisco in 1970.
The arrival of 747s in the years following allowed them to rapidly continue expansion
until diplomatic strains meant they would need to begin being creative with
their routes and their airline itself. The first creative move was negotiating
with Japan to allow China Airlines to fly to Tokyo’s Haneda airport so that
their aircraft would never cross paths with mainland carrier aircraft at Tokyo Narita.
Over the years, many airlines created separate subsidiaries specifically for flying to Taipei-
one of the few you’ll still see flying out there today is dressed in KLM colors, with
KLM ASIA written on the side and the tail of the aircraft- as opposed to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
The latter is the flag carrier of the Netherlands, the former, technically, is not.
Mandarin Airlines was established in the 1990s for mostly the same purpose-
allowing China Airlines to access markets like Sydney and Vancouver without added tension.
May we pause for a moment to admire the cutest airport escalator I’ve ever seen.
Some years later, the plum blossom logo replaced the original flag displayed on
their aircraft tails and in 2003, they had their first cross straits flight from Taipei
to Shanghai via Hong Kong, with the first Nonstop flight beginning in 2005 from Taipei to Beijing.
In 2010 they joined the SkyTeam alliance and currently they fly to an impressive
118 destinations with their fleet of 84 aircraft, 21 of which are cargo only.
They are the 10th largest cargo airline in the world by freight revenue ton kilometer.
Currently they have 41 more Passenger aircraft on order,
more than half of which are Boeing 787s which are meant to replace their A330 fleet.
I arrived at the gate only to find a really not fantastic view of our A350,
so I headed over to another gate to try to get a better view and bought some
obligatory Mango Tarts along with way. If you support the content I’ve been
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The view from over here is a little bit better, but still not great.
In general, planespotting at this airport isn’t great. From terminal 1 where we are now,
the windows have these muddy tints on them and the aircraft are often too close to get good shots.
Even over at Terminal 2 the views are better but they have these crazy blue tints on the windows.
Anyway, back to the gate now,
boarding would begin ten minutes late, which they apologized for around 8 times.
Let’s check out today’s flight stats. We actually ended up departing a few minutes
early and spent just over three hours in the air, arriving in Saigon 14 minutes ahead of schedule.
Stepping on board I was greeted by name and welcomed aboard,
passing through the premium economy cabin on the way to economy. Note that China
Airlines is one of the few airlines to offer Premium Economy in a 2-3-2 pattern on an A350.
I made my way to my seat which would be 45A for today.
Honestly, I think China Airlines has the best looking economy cabins out there. From the seats
to the carpets, to the upholstery to the lighting- it’s all just very handsome and inviting.
Obviously this is a long haul product which
the airline uses near exclusively on their twice daily flights to Saigon.
Each seat has an adjustable headrest, ample padding and a good amount of legroom,
I’d say right around 32 inches of pitch today.
As you take a look at the rest of the seat details,
let me set the tone for the service on board- and I will mention that what was done for me I
also saw happen to four other elite passengers on near me- I wasn’t found out or something.
So, the flight wasn’t sold out, but the two seats next to me were occupied,
no problem. It crossed my mind to move after take off but honest the
seat was really comfortable so I was also just okay staying there.
The purser came over, directly to me and introduced herself, greeting me by name,
no tablet in hand and thanked me for being a SkyTeam Elite Plus member.
She offered me a choice of pre take off drink and specifically let me know that she was going to
find a row that I could have all to myself. This was, all a very nice touch,
but considering she didn’t say a word to the passengers next to me, it was like 3% awkward.
I was surprised at what just happened so I just asked for a cup of water.
After the doors closed, sure enough she came back and offered me a row of three seats two
rows back. By chance the couple next to me just moved there instead since they’d need
to get up for me to get out anyway. I saw her do the same with the other elite passengers.
I’ve seen something similar before, but only on Cathay Pacific pre-covid, where the flight
attendants would routinely pass out bottles of Evian to One World Emerald members, but that
was the extend of it. On Singapore, I’d expect a personal greeting at the seat and that’s all.
Enough of that for now, let’s push back and check out the safety video.
We had a quick taxi to the runway, lining up for a southerly take off. The spool up,
take off and airport stats are coming up next.
It was a pretty smoggy day and once above it you could clearly see how thick the soup was below us.
Let’s check out some of the comfort items. Upon boarding there was a standard economy
pillow and banket at each seat. While I’d certainly expect these to be available by request,
for such short flights, I was surprised to see it proactively at each seat.
As for the entertainment on offer, there was a decent selection,
nothing to blow your socks off, but for such a short flight it was more than sufficient.
They also had the standard voyager 3D airshow.
The cabin was served very efficiently, not being completely full. The choices
were minced pork noodle or fish with rice. I think fish rice. Honestly,
I heard minced pork noodle and my brain just stopped there.
This was genuinely one of the better economy entrees I’ve ever had and the meal in general
was great for a short regional flight. There was also a small fruit plate and an
edamame salad of sorts. Served alongside a standard roll and a packaged cookie.
As for the 10 second toilet tour, this was impressive in here. It
was spotlessly clean and they even had some nice products on hand for economy
passengers. That’s near unheard of for a short flight like this.
Hard to see on camera, but the strobing rainbow lighting effect
I believe was our signal that we were approaching Saigon.
We had quite a few beautiful fluffy clouds to fly through before descending into a truly awful soup.
Believe it or not, there’s land down there. Truly
one of the worst days for air pollution I’d seen in Saigon since before Covid.
We’re coming in for landing now as we have our final descent over
the outer districts of Saigon. The landing stats are coming up soon.
It was a quick taxi to the international terminal
where were pulled up along a Cathay Qatar transformer and a Vietjet A330.
So, as I make my way to a painful hour long immigration queue, let me sum up the
flight as best as I can. The ground staff and lounge was fantastic, the meal was fantastic,
the plane and cabin was fantastic, the crew was fantastic and well yeah, the flight was fantastic.
Even the nit-picker inside of me couldn’t find something to fault here. Big props to China
Airlines for maintaining such standards on what many airlines consider to be a ‘throwaway’ flight.
And by the way, yes I know that my only two perfect scores for airlines are both Taiwanese
carriers, but before someone starts talking about a conspiracy theory in the comments,
might I gently suggest that perhaps, Taiwanese carriers are just that good?
Well, that’ll do it for today. I really do hope you enjoyed this one, I certainly did.
If you did, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up and subscribe with
notifications so you don’t miss out on any of my upcoming content. I’ll see
you next time from The Regent in Taipei. Oh and thanks for watching until the end.