EVA Air is a Southeast Asian airline based in Taiwan. It flies to six U.S. cities from its hub in Taipei, meaning most of us haven’t flown them — or would find ourselves in a situation that would require us to fly an EVA airplane. In fact, if you know EVA Air at all, it’s probably from their famous Hello Kitty A330 plane.
The reason EVA Air can still be relevant to your life is that it’s a member of Star Alliance, with literally dozens of partner airlines you can fly you’ve got Eva Infinity miles. Whether or not the airline offers reasonable award prices is the question. Their miles are moderately easy to earn, after all, if you’ve got the right travel credit cards. Eva Air is a transfer partner of Citi ThankYou points and Capital One miles.
Let’s take a look at EVA’s award chart, and the best way to use its miles!
EVA Air award chart for EVA flights
If you’re actually flying on EVA Air, you’ll find the EVA Air miles redemption chart for your flights below.
This is for one-way awards. To find the round-trip price, just double these figures.
For travel especially between the U.S. and Taiwan, these prices are high. American Airlines and United will both charge you under 40,000 miles each way in coach, and as little as 70,000 miles in business class. That means you’re pretty well guaranteed to save between 5,000 and 10,000 miles by using miles that are easier to accrue.
EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Star Alliance award chart
We first created a Star Alliance award chart for EVA Air years ago when we couldn’t find one anywhere on the web. Since then, EVA has created an easy-to-follow chart of their own — and tweaked some prices, too. That’s good, as that’s the one the vast majority of us will be using.
Still, there’s nothing much to see here.
You can find this chart here, but note that you’ll have to download it. We’ve made it slightly easier to read below.
This EVA Air mileage redemption chart displays the prices for round-trip flights.
Nothing looks like an absolute steal. Flights seem to almost always price higher than the airline’s star alliance partners are willing to charge. However, EVA has something many of its partners don’t: Two free stopovers on round-trip flights.
Stopover rules
The terms and conditions mention a couple of rules concerning stopovers. Here are the terms specific for EVA Air flights:
- Two stopovers are allowed for a round trip award ticket, including one in outbound and one in inbound. The turnaround point and stopovers cannot be the same with the origin or destination’s nation
- A one-way award ticket cannot include a stopover
- Transit in Taiwan is not permitted for travel starting from the Taiwan area
Here are the terms for Star Alliance partner award flights:
- Two stopovers are allowed for a round trip award ticket, including one outbound and one inbound. The turnaround point and stopovers cannot be the same with the origin or destination’s nation. A maximum of six sectors is allowed for each round trip award ticket.
- Stopovers are not allowed for a one-way ticket. A maximum of three sectors is allowed for each one-way award ticket.
Two stopovers per round-trip is above average, though the limited sectors could prove a real pain. The worst part is that stopovers aren’t available online — you can search for EVA awards on Evaair.com and then call them if you want to add a stopover.
One final stopover note: You can have a maximum of seven stopovers if booking Around the World Travel with EVA Air miles.
Best use of EVA Air miles
The EVA Air website can be a little confusing. You’ll need a free account to search for award flights, but if you’ve already taken care of that, click here to search for Star Alliance award flights.
Middle East in business class for 67,500 miles one-way
The Middle East is far. Flying from the West Coast to Dubai means 14+ hours in the air. And getting there in a luxurious lie-flat business class seat for 67,500 miles is a really good deal. EVA Air can make that happen.
As a point of comparison, American will charge 70,000 miles for this route, while United and Delta charge 80,000+ miles.
Read our post on keys to finding Star Alliance award seats for some easy tricks if for some reason you don’t see any awards for the particular dates you want.
Hop around South America for 60,000 miles
Remember, booking round-trip tickets with EVA Air unlocks two free stopovers — one during your outbound flight and one during your return. As long as your journey is six legs or less, you’re good to go.
Here’s an example that should work (though I didn’t actually call to price it out):
- Chicago to Lima (connection in Panama City) – 2 legs
- Lima to Santigo, Chile (1 leg)
- Santiago to Rio de Janeiro (1 leg)
- Rio to Chicago (connection in Panama City) – 2 legs
These are three massive bucket list destinations. You could see Machu Picchu, Patagonia, and Copacabana Beach all for 60,000 miles — averaging 15,000 miles per destination.
Open-jaws are also allowed during your trip, so if for some reason your total sectors are higher than six, you could book a separate leg of cheap travel and hit another destination.
Business class to Europe for 65,000 miles one-way
If you find yourself with a load of EVA Air miles, this could be a way to redeem them while getting some competitive value. I mentioned before that there aren’t many ways this program will save you above the ability of other airline programs, but business class to Europe isn’t a slouch. Especially because you get those stopovers for round-trip tickets!
Bottom line
EVA Air isn’t totally useless. While there are often better ways to spend your Citi ThankYou points and Capital One miles, there are a few scenarios in which you could get outsized value.
The program’s biggest saving grace is its allowance of two stopovers per round-trip flight, along with open jaws.
Let me know if you’ve ever redeemed EVA Air miles, and if you’ve got any other tricks! And subscribe to our newsletter for miles and points info like this delivered to your inbox once per day.