Flight Review: Eva Air Business Class 747-400 Manila to Taipei

View from the wing - Manila, Philippines.

On our recent trip across Asia, we were fortunate to experience business class flights due to our Aeroplan flight redemptions. Our flight was Manila to Hong Kong, but with a brief stopover in Taiwan on the way, so this was a short 2 hour flight between Manila and Taipei.

We first checked into the Business class counter for Eva Air, and proceeded to the PAGSS Lounge to await our flight.

The lounge was quite simple with some assorted Filipino-style pastries and snacks.

They also had some main dishes and soups, however there weren't any vegetarian options and we knew we would have a meal on the plane, so we didn't have anything much.

Boarding was good as usual, our plane was a Boeing 747-400 as seen in the photo above.

As usual we chose the two seats at the very back of the section.We like the semi-cove of privacy that the corner seats offer as well as not having to worry about disturbing people behind you.

After settling in, a flight attendant approached us and told us that the airline staff had forgotten to ask us to pay the exit fee. Apparently when you leave the Philippines you have to pay an exit fee which you would be prompted to pay at the check-in desk, but it seems like the staff had forgotten to ask us.

So we actually had to take out a credit card and they left to process it, which I found really strange. I had to actually ask for a receipt when they didn't offer one after returning the card.

These were the seat controls. This seat doesn't extend to a lie-flat position but rather an extended diagonal position as shown on the top-right button.

This is what the chair looks like in its sleep position. Since this was only a two hour flight we didn't have much reason to extend the chair, however on our later flight from South Korea to Chicago I later discovered that sleeping in this position where you're slanted downwards can be just as painful as economy, unfortunately.

And then we were off, with a lovely view of the sea.

We had preordered the halal meal on this flight, so we were only given a drinks menu to choose from.

Afterwards flight attendants came by to help take out our tables and set tablecloths.

This was our pre-ordered Halal "Muslim Meal" for Business class, which would set a recurring theme for the following few flights. The main dish was fish with steamed vegetables which was pretty nice, and then as we would learn in all of the flights across Asia, our dessert was always fruit and some weird jello.

The main meal would come with fruit and jello, and then once these dishes were cleared and they went around serving dessert, we would be offered an additional bowl of fruit while the other passengers got ice cream and cake. The flight attendants explained that this is what came with the Muslim meal and they simply didn't have any extras of the other dessert, which was a little sad if the dessert looked particularly scrumptious.

But alhamdulilah, at least fruit is good for you, I guess :P

Our flight landed without issue in the beautiful city of Taipei, which was a short wait until the flight to Hong Kong, our next destination.

-Maryam

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Stay tuned for more Business class flights from our World Trip! :)

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