Excellent seat and IFE make up for subpar catering in EVA Air economyRunway Girl

After a pair of fantastic business class flights with United Airlines and Starlux, it was time to pay the piper and fly home to New York from Taipei, Taiwan — in economy class! For this journey I opted to book with EVA Air, an airline I had never flown before.

I booked with miles through United, and thankfully the reservation number generated by United was accepted on the EVA Air web site, allowing me to easily book seats in advance.

Among the reasons I booked EVA over competitor China Airlines was that part of EVA’s Boeing 777-300ER fleet still sports a much more comfortable 3-3-3 seat layout, while China Airlines has fully transitioned to a snug 3-4-3 configuration.

With preferred seats secured and online check-in completed, it was time to head home. Unlike the madness at Osaka for my previous Starlux flight, Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport was quiet and efficient with hardly any wait for security and exit immigration.

Together with my travel companion, I spent an hour or so of spare time at one of the several Priority Pass lounges.

Hot food options were available in the lounge.

On boarding, I made my way back to the economy class cabin. Each seat had a wrapped blanket, pillow and cheap looking earbuds awaiting passengers, which I quickly stashed in the overhead bin along with our bags. We chose two seats in the center section since the 3-3-3 configuration meant nobody would be climbing over us to reach the aisle.

The seats offer roughly 32 inches of pitch, which is enough for me to fit comfortably.

EVA’s 777s do not have personal air gaspers, but this may have been the coldest flight I’ve ever been on. That’s better than being too warm, of course, so I simply piled on a few blankets.

Economy seats are equipped with Panasonic Avionics in-seat IFE with two headphone jacks and a USB-A port. An AC power outlet can also be found under each seat pair.

The enVoyage-branded entertainment was the highlight of the flight, as EVA and Panasonic have done an excellent job in customizing the user interface.

Rather than just a screen with movies, the system was interactive, clean, and crisp and loaded with an above-average level of content for the region. A decent amount of music was available, and could even be played with the screen turned off.

I especially enjoyed the option in the settings menu to change the user interface to a much darker night mode. I don’t believe I’ve come across this functionality before; it dramatically reduced eye strain whilst I navigated the system in a dark cabin. I do wish this option was triggered automatically depending on the cabin lighting settings.

The only annoyance I had was that, when I exited a movie to access the menu, music was always playing with no obvious way to turn it off. Sometimes I just like to stare at the screen and consider my options, but the mandatory music made that unappealing and jarring.

Wi-Fi provided by Panasonic was also available, but EVA’s rate plans were simply too high to make sense for me. Moreover, the plans — except the most expensive $40 tier — are data limited. Messaging runs $5, but offers only 30MB. This was a big miss, in my opinion.

Also a big miss was the catering — much to my disappointment! I generally have high hopes for decent catering from Asian airlines, but EVA let us down. Both main meals offered the choice between an Asian and western dish, and I tried both. The sticky rice served with the Asian meal was good, but the rest of it was subpar.

The western meal, consisting of beef in a sauce with potato and veggies, was extremely disappointing and small.

A mid-flight snack service didn’t occur until far too close to the pre-arrival meal, which was similarly disappointing. The pre-arrival western meal was a partial repeat of the main meal and just wasn’t very good. I expected better across the board from EVA. The cabin crew members were lovely and engaging throughout the entire flight, however.

After nearly 15 hours on board I was very ready to get off the aircraft, but because of the comfortable seat and quality entertainment system I never found myself clawing at the sidewalls.

EVA definitely has room for improvement in the catering department, but overall it was a positive experience.

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