a seat with a monitor on the side

BOOKED: EVA Air 787 Business Class (I’m An Idiot)

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I’m an idiot sometimes.

This December break I found my schedule freer than I was expecting, and I also saw that my social media following was going quite well, so I decided to do a review trip to show my thankfulness. Obviously I’m a high school student so I’m broke (to say the least), but from previous travels I managed to rack up quite a number of Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles. Since I can’t be away from home for too long, I decided to book myself into a same-day return Star Alliance shorthaul business class product, so started looking at options.

I came across a Singapore Airlines roundtrip ticket from Hong Kong to Singapore and back for a total of 55,000 miles. This would seat me in business class on their 777-200 and 777-300ER, and would get me home in time (as well as letting me spend some time in my favourite city in the world, even if I wasn’t actually leaving the airport). However, for some reason Singapore Airlines wouldn’t let me book a ticket on their website, so I started looking at other options, thinking that it was to do with my unaccompanied minor status (which, being 17, I’d have to fill out a waiver form for).

a seat with a pillow on itSingapore Airlines Boeing 777 Business Class 

I looked at a flight to Taipei, and saw that EVA Air was offering a business class flight between Hong Kong and Taipei for 40,000 KrisFlyer miles with a lot of award availability. I also saw that the return flight was going to be on an EVA Air 787, which I was really excited about. I’ve seen Ethan’s positive impressions regarding the hard product, but he flew in economy, so I wanted to get the full experience.

I couldn’t price that either, so I decided I might as well call the Singapore Airlines call center. With all the adrenaline of a potential new review rushing within me, I decided to do just that.

The Singapore Airlines agent was incredibly competent, even though I didn’t manage to get his name. Soon I had myself a business class ticket on EVA Air’s 787, with the outbound on an EVA A330 (I’m hoping to get EVA’s new A330 product, but I’m not sure if I’ll get that).

a seat in an airplane with a table and windowsEVA Air Boeing 787 Business Class Seat 6A

Then I took a deep breath and went to the gym, and thought again.

???????????????????

I gave up eight hours in business class on Singapore Airlines for less than half that time on EVA Air, despite getting to review the 787.

The 15k miles that I “save” are negligible. I can barely get an economy class seat with that. And the fuel surcharges were exactly the same.

While I get to cross an airline off the list (in theory, since I’ve reviewed Singapore Airlines before in premium economy, but never EVA Air even though I flew them once back in 2013), I spent 40k miles for a short hop over to Taipei when for less than 40% more I would’ve redeemed myself at least double the flying time. The quality of the products are similar.

That’s not even to mention that I know at least two YouTuber friends that have upcoming EVA 787 reviews, whereas I can’t find a really good video review of Singapore Airlines’ 777 product out there (if you’ve seen one, let me know).

Bottom Line

The first thing I learned is how amazing my parents are and how grateful I should be that they’re letting me do a turnaround for review purposes at all. The fact that they trust me with this is insane, and even though this trip is “technically” self-funded (I’m paying for the fuel surtaxes), I still owe it to them to make sure the quality of the reports I write are produced with the best of my ability.

But I also learned that booking by impulse is never a good thing. I was in a rush since I wanted to get to the gym before it closed, but I should’ve been patient; since I don’t have another source of miles at the moment (I don’t have a credit card, and my mileage situation is terrible to start with), I should’ve taken the time to look at other options and evaluate instead of making an impulsive decision. I also learned that alcohol doesn’t usually help with making good decisions, but we’ll leave that to the side for now. 🙂

So yeah, expect an EVA review to come up soon. This will be a great review nonetheless – I’m definitely not complaining about the fact that I’ll be able to bring you guys a comprehensive review of two new cabin products. I’ll be taking this trip in early January, so stay tuned.

Did I make the right decision? What would you have done instead?

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