*EVA has now made an official announcement of the Taipei to Houston route, so no more speculation.
It appears as though the much rumored EVA Air Taipei to Houston non-stop service is now official. Well, it’s loaded into the schedule it seems.
Airlineroute.net is reporting that the flight will start on June 21, 2015 and will have the following schedule:
BR52 Taipei to Houston departing 10:00PM arriving 11:25PM [Sun, Tue, Wed, Fri]
BR51 Houston to Taipei departing 1:15AM arriving 5:55AM (+1 day) [Mon, Wed, Thu, Sat]
The actual first flight will be on June 19, 2015 and that flight will arrive at IAH at 5:45pm. My guess is that this flight is timed as a positioning flight to get the aircraft to Houston to operate a day later while still allowing daylight for the press and local officiants to give their speeches.
Taipei to Houston is just under 8,000 miles and will take 14 hours and 25 minutes. The reverse, Houston to Taipei, will clock in at 15 hours and 40 minutes due to winds.
As far as service goes, EVA’s product looks really nice with full lie-flat seats in business and a very decent looking economy product. Ben Schlappig has a number of trip reports on his blog at One Mile at a Time and they are worth a look if you are interested in the EVA product.
It is great to have more options to Asia out of Houston and I think this flight is timed perfectly with connections in Taipei to allow you to get just about anywhere in Asia easily. This will also bring a little more competition to United (even though they are Star Alliance members) and maybe we’ll see some fare sales to Asia!
I don’t think these flight times are very good. I wouldn’t want to arrive in Houston at 11pm. That takes all next day business meetings out, causing an extra day in Houston. This arrival time doesn’t allow Eva to connect onto United flights as well. I would think EVA would be in a better position if they could market all of Texas. Leaving Houston at 1am doesn’t sound fun either. Nothing worse then being up all day then facing a 15 hour flight in Y class. I wish them luck, I’ll be flying Korean Air at 9am.
Brad,
EVA is less focused on connecting traffic in Houston and more focused on connecting people from Houston to a ton of Asian destinations.
I disagree about the timing, it gives you a full day in Taipei or, if you’re connecting, more time in the same day at your destination.
Leaving Houston at 9am on Korean has you land around 3-4pm in Seoul, catching the last connections from there. Meaning, if you’re late into Seoul, you are wasting a day.