It may not have the sleek cabins like my last flight, but for a three hour regional flight,
EVA’s 777 certainly hold their own.
Hi there, my name is Kevin.
This channel came from a love of traveling, a love of the full process and the journey
itself.
I feature airline trip reports and high end hotel reviews from all over the world.
My reviews aren’t sponsored by airlines or hotels so you can be sure to get my unbiased
honest opinion.
Am I an expert?
You can decide.
Am I fair?
Yea, I am.
Let’s get into it.
Welcome to Taipei.
This is the third and final part of my itinerary from New York to Saigon, the first two on
an Austrian 767 and then an EVA 787.
If you’d like to know exactly what I paid for this itinerary or my next five videos
in queue, please check out the description below.
Taipei’s airport has a bit of a strange layout, but it’s always been one of my favorite
places to transit through- it’s just easy to navigate and well signed.
Considering EVA, China Airlines and soon Starlux are airlines that focus on a lot of transfer
traffic, this makes sense.
I did a quick check with the ground staff asking about my bags that Austrian left in
New York- they’re still there- that’s about it at this point so I headed for the
lounges.
EVA’s lounges I’ve always thought have never really lived up to their on board product.
Here, they have three lounges grouped together, the Garden, the Infinity and The Star.
Each has their own decoration.
The seating areas are all fine, but none have apron views and they don’t feel particularly
spacious.
The other problem being the lounge food.
It’s not that it’s bad, but EVA serves incredible food in the air, so the offerings
in their lounges just leave a bit to be desired.
The past decade has been a bit of a rocky few years for the top of the ladder at EVA
and EVA’s drama managed to totally change the face of Taiwanese aviation.
In January of 2016, Evergreen Group’s chairman Chang Yung-fa died, leaving control of the
company to his son by his second marriage, Chang Kuo-Wei.
This wasn’t received well and in March 2016, a corporate coup by the three children of
Chung Yung-Fa’s first marriage removed the newly appointed chairman and replaced him
with Lin Pang-Shui.
Soon after Chang Kuo-Wei announced he would start his own airline and with that Starlux
was born.
I look forward to hopefully trying Starlux to the US after they get operations into full
swing.
Time to head to the gate.
No need to adjust your screen, these windows have a very heavy blue tint.
EVA is a unique airline in that near 80% of its fleet is widebody with 777-300ERs accounting
for almost have of their fleet with 34 in service.
Keeping in mind that EVA does work in coordination with other Evergreen shipping businesses,
it makes sense for the high utilization of 777s even on short routes like to Saigon because
777s can carry a crap load of cargo, even with a full passenger load.
The gate area reminded me of waiting for a flight in Miami.
Everyone looks to be standing still, but if you took a time lapse you’d notice everyone
inching closer and closer almost like they were trying to pounce the gate agents as their
prey.
Then of course like always as soon as they call Business class boarding they disperse
as if they had no idea there were boarding groups.
For today’s flight we took off 16 minutes late and landed 15 minutes late on this three
hour journey to the southwest.
By the way, a friendly reminder that not only is this flight 100% self funded, EVA had absolutely
no idea I’d be on this flight- or who I was for that matter.
In a world where content creators are recognized every day, I still maintain that I think the
only way to give a true unbiased review is to fly anonymously.
And so, I really do appreciate every like, comment, subscription or glance at my Patreon
as they all really do contribute to growing the channel and keeping the content flowing.
A big thanks in advance for watching today.
Boarding began around five minutes late and off we went.
Let me prepare you for the interior of this plane.
It gives a whole new meaning to drab.
The ironic part is the seats are in phenomenal condition, but the colors just feel so dated.
I call this color palate “All of the shades of green that Cathay decided not to use.”
That said, it is a very comfortable cabin.
The 777s feature 39 business class reverse herringbone seats arranged in a 1-2-1 pattern
spread across two cabins.
Avoid row 7 for a missing window and go for row 8 if you enjoy engine views- otherwise,
there’s really not a bad seat on board.
As with their 787s, these seats also offer very generous seat measurement in every direction.
There’s also loads of storage nooks throughout the seating area.
These seats are still branded as Royal Laural which is what they call their business class,
but it does feel they’re steering away from these labels- perhaps even more surprisingly
their new 787s don’t even feature premium economy.
Considering EVA was the first ever airline to offer it from 1991, that’s significant.
As I said, the seat itself is in near new condition.
To your side you have the remote for the IFE and all of the controls for your seat.
Your armrest can raise and lower making it easy to sneak out with a table full of food
and there’s plenty of room for stretching out your feet.
Pre departure drinks of your choice were offered along with pre packaged wet towels and alcohol
wipes.
Technically speaking you can't use your monitors for taxi, take off and landing but let’s
be real we all know what happens as soon as the flight crew buckles up.
We pushed back and some beautiful tail views on the way to the runway.
Lot’s of other aircraft here for heavy maintenance from Evergreen including many carriers that
don’t fly to Taipei such as Austrian and Air Canada Rouge.
We would be taking off to the north.
The spool up, take off and airport stats are coming up now.
Amenities at the seat I suppose are limited but for a short flight they’re more than
adequate.
The same down pillow as they offer on long haul flights and blankets were available by
request.
Thunder headphones are one of the better options in business classes these days.
Again thankful the slippers are open toed- though odd that these are nearly the exact
same slippers as my last flight, except these don’t say Jason Wu on them.
I suppose pinching a few licensing pennies.
A decent selection of movies is available, plenty for a short flight like today and the
remote is easy to use and responsive.
Breakfast started with some very good coffee, a sparkling water and some crackers.
Here’s the full menu for the flight.
The red prices on the wines are to give you an idea of current retail prices for them
in USD.
Note that the wines on this flight were completely different from my last flight from Vienna,
which I think makes perfect sense, but many east Asian carrier maintain the same wine
list across regional and long haul flights.
That said, EVA’s regional wine list is better than many long haul lists out there.
We started out with a tea smoked duck appetizer.
One thing I don’t really understand about EVA’s branding is that they have totally
different serveware designs for their 777s compared to the newer 787s.
EVA has a version of Book the Cook where you can choose different items not available on
board if you book in advance.
I went for the braised beef shank, tendon and trip in superior soya sauce with thick
noodles.
If you’re ever trying to decide on dishes on EVA, always go for something braised, or
a fish or pork dish.
These are consistently considered by me and other frequent fliers to be where EVA’s
catering excels.
For dessert we had fresh fruit and a Dayuling Black tea flavored chestnut tart.
That sounded great, but in reality was pretty bland.
Bathrooms as always on EVA are pristine and service in general today was top notch.
Especially for such a quick flight, to feel like you got a full business class experience
is quite a treat.
Time quite literally flew by.
Here’s a look at the seat in full flat mode as we begin to cross over Vietnam’s central
highlands.
The beautiful views eventually gave way to smog as we approached Saigon where we would
be landing from the east.
And, this is the first ever right side landing I’ve ever had on the channel.
I must have been tired when I booked my seat because there’s nothing to see from the
right side.
I’ll note that I put in my baggage claims here for my missing bags.
The system didn’t exactly instill confidence but I just had to go with it.
At this point it is a third party Airports of Vietnam agent that handles the missing
bags until the fifth day when the responsibility transfers to EVA directly.
I already knew where my bags were but the airport staff called me daily to give me updates
if they knew anything.
Long story short, they put the bags on different itineraries and they arrived to me three and
four days after I arrived in Saigon.
A quick taxi to the gate and we were set free.
EVA needs to put more attention in their Lounge food program and I’d be elated if they update
the 777 cabins to match the 787s, but otherwise there’s little to fault.
It’s a solid regional product.
I really hope you enjoyed this trip report today, if you did please subscribe so you
can check out my next video which will finally be a video from Vietnam, from the sublime
Park Hyatt Saigon to be exact.
Thanks again for clicking that thumbs up.