I’m a big fan of EVA Air. The airline has an excellent business class product, great availability for its own (awkwardly-named) Infinity MileageLands customers, tasty food, and competitive pricing on non-stops to Taiwan. Citi ThankYou Rewards transfer 1:1 to EVA, and it’s a superlative way to use your points.
There’s one problem, though: booking awards via EVA’s search engine is terribly unintuitive, and that process is probably one of the biggest reasons that relatively few points and miles folks utilize it. We’ve been promising a post outlining how to search for EVA Air award flights for some time…and here it finally is.
EVA Air award chart
Here’s the current award chart for travel on EVA (which can also be found here):
EVA Air transfer partners
Both Citi ThankYou Rewards and Capital One Miles can be transferred to EVA, although Citi has a much better ratio:
| Rewards Program | Amex Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Chase Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Citi Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Capital One Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Bilt Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) | Wells Fargo Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EVA Air Infinity MileageLands | 1 to 1 (2 to 4 days) | 1000 to 750 (~1 day) |
I don’t recall ever having seen a transfer bonus to EVA from either one of them.
How to book award flights with EVA Air
1) Create an Infinity MileageLands account for each traveler
In order to find more than one seat, you have to create a separate account for each passenger before searching. You can find the registration page here. Keep track of your number, there’s only about a 50/50 shot that EVA will send it to you.
2) Log in to EVA Air’s website
Click here to find the award search page on EVA’s website. When you scroll down, you’ll notice that there are several different options, including “Log In,” “Select Itinerary,” and “Online Ticketing.” Regardless of which one you select, you’ll have to log-in first.
Confusingly, both “Login” and “Select Itinerary” allow you to search for flights, while “Online Ticketing” doesn’t. Select one of those.
3) Enter the MileageLands number AND password for each passenger
After selecting the date and route you’d like to search for, you have to enter the EVA frequent flyer number and password for every passenger in your party. Then, you’ll be able to search for multi-passenger availability.
4) Look for “available,” not “waiting”
It can be unintuitive to figure out whether or not there’s availability…but there often is.
When you see the search results, watch out for flights that are only waitlisted. If it says “waiting”, as you see on all of the flights shown below, then there isn’t availability:
If the flight says “Available,” then it can be booked.
Select the flight that you’re looking for, then click “Confirm” at the bottom of the page. Note that it says “Unconfirmed” right beside “Available.” You’ll see a message that says it can’t be confirmed until booking (which can be scary since most of us will have to transfer points):
Don’t worry about it. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, if it says available, you’ll be able to book the award.
Once you hit “Confirm” (again), you’ll see the required mileage for the flight.
You won’t be able to see the surcharges for the award unless you have enough miles in your account to book it. Normally, US – Asia is around $100-$150.
5) Transfer miles to each account in order to book
Yet another frustrating, unintuitive feature of EVA’s award-booking process is that you can’t book tickets for two passengers without having enough miles for each ticket in each account…which is a royal pain.
The easiest way to do that is to transfer points directly into each account. Both Citi and Capital One both allow you do this fairly easily, but if using Citi, the transferred points expire in 90 days, so don’t do it too far in advance. Once you’ve transferred the Citi or Capital One points to your travel companion, you can then move them directly into that person’s EVA account.
Unfortunately, it takes both Citi and Capital One transfers a day or two to be reflected in your MileageLands account. The seats don’t fly off the shelves, and I’ve never had an award disappear out from under me while I was waiting for the miles to show up, but there is a non-zero chance of it happening.
Adding a transfer “nominee”
You can also go through a lengthy process to add someone to your account as a “nominee,” so that you can transfer EVA miles directly to them. First, go to the “Manage My Account Page” and select “Nominee List Management:”
You’ll first see a button that says “Download Online Service Form:”
You download that form, fill it out and then either fax it or scan / e-mail it to your local MileageLands Service Center (see list here – I had to call for the LA e-mail address). Note that you don’t be able to add online services unless you’ve already transferred miles into your account or earned miles.
Normally, they process the form in a matter of hours and you’ll get an e-mail notifying you that online service has been added your account. But, you’re not done yet.
You then have to register your travel companion as a “nominee.” Go back to the Nominee List Management screen and you’ll now see the ability to add someone using their MileageLands accounts number:
You can add up to six nominees per year and, once they’re added, you don’t need to do it again. After submitting the request online, your companion will be available the next day (Taiwan time). Once they’re added, you can select them from a dropdown menu and transfer miles directly to them.
6) Choose “Online Ticketing,” not “Reservation”
Now that you have the appropriate amount of miles in each account, you’re finally ready to book. Most of the rest of the process will be straightforward using the search process outlined above.
However, there’s one final, confusing screen. After you enter all of your details and click to finalize the booking, you’ll be given the following option:
Choose “Online Ticketing.” The other button will just make a reservation and you’ll then have to go through the process of paying for it after you make the reservation…and we’ve all had enough fun for one day, right?
Booking Stopovers
EVA allows you to have a free stopover in Taipei on roundtrip tickets only. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), there’s no way to do it online, you have to call in. It’s easiest if you already have the flight numbers and dates that you want to book ready to go and also have confirmed availability beforehand.
Quick Thoughts
I’ve often wondered if EVA intentionally made it’s award-booking process obtuse and unintuitive. It’s hard to explain it otherwise. Regardless of the motive or lack thereof, it’s undoubtedly part of the reason why there’s such good availability for many of its routes.
It is worth struggling with, though. I find more availability through EVA from the West Coast than any other Asian carrier, and it’s a joy to fly. Hopefully this post helps avoid most of the headache that comes with booking through Infinity MileageLands.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
we are family of 4 with 1 minor. my kids dont have capital one or citi accounts. So nominee is the way to go for us.
This is how far I have got
>I setup account for each of us = 4 EVA accounts.
>Then transferred from my capone to my eva account 1000=750 miles so that I can activate online service on my account. This transfer was instant as datapoint for others to know.
>Filled out the form and plan to email it to them.
Once online service is setup, I am hoping I can then
>add rest of my family as nominee
> transfer points from my citi or cap one to my eva account
> then transfer miles required for each award ticket from my eva account to each of my family members eva account.
>find available award ticket and then hopefully book.
Can someone please share EVA Air’s LA email address. Office is closed for now (office hours) and I just want to wrap this up and not wait.
I have Citi and Capital One points but I would like to book a ticket for my mother. She does not have a Citi or Capital One account. I have created an EVA Air account for her. Can I transfer my points from Citi and Capital One to her EVA Air account? Or I have to transfer it to my EVA Air account and then transfer it to her EVA Air account?
P2 and I are flying biz class ORD-TPE-SIN in November for 160,000 points and a little over $400 in taxes. Definitely was the best deal. But I’ll be the first to admit my award booker found and purchased the tickets on our behalf. Others may disagree, but I’m glad to use CB earnings to cover that cost. That learning curve is too steep for an award I’ll probably only book once or twice in my lifetime.
This is even more complicated than what you explained. I have miles on my account and i have no idea how to use them, because some of them are showing as “self mileage”, some as “transfered mileage” and it says “When the sum of your self earned and reinstated mileage reaches 50% of the mileage requirement, you can purchase mileage to redeem Award Ticket. “. I don’t know who created this system but it’s over complicated, and I am scared of transferring miles (i don’t even know how many i should transfer because i don’t understand which self or reinstated or transfered I can use). Also, you said in your article “Once you’ve transferred the points, you can then put move them directly into each passengers EVA account.” but in the paragraph before that you already transfered to each account? And does that also mean that you can only transfer from Citi’s A account to EVA’s A account and you cannot transfer then from A to B’s account? So complicated..
Don’t worry about the self vs transfer mileage, it all works the same, but with different expiry dates. Both transfer and self will be additive towards awards.
The message is simply telling you that you can buy up to half of the amount of miles needed for an award.
You can transfer Citi and Capital One points to anyone. Once they have those transferable points in their own account, you can then move them to that person’s EVA loyalty account.
If the person that you’re traveling with doesn’t have a Citi or Capital One account, you’re then stuck going through the nominee/transfer process.
And yes, it’s all way more complicated than it needs to be.
Thanks for the quick update. As for the self vs transfered, I can only choose one of the two options, i cannot select both, so i have 11000 miles in self, and 500 in transfered, how can I combined both to book?
You don’t combine them, EVA does. It automatically applies miles that are expiring first.
I read on other sites that Self-earned miles/reinstated miles are in one “bucket”, and transferred miles are in a separate “bucket”.
You must have either have:
1) half of required miles in self-earned/reinstated bucket (then top up with cash)
OR
2) all required miles in transferred bucket.
You cannot combine both buckets for 1 award ticket. Is that the case?
I heard you can go to Eva Air physical office locations (they have few locations like https://www.evaair.com/en-us/customer-services/contact-us/contact/?countryCode=San+Francisco )
And there they can handle award booking for multiple people and then you don’t need to all those forms etc and do it from one account. Anyone tried it?
“Due to safety issue, It is not applicable to apply for the online service function if the member has only earned Award miles from joining online or filling in completed data in the account.”
You have to have earned or transferred in some points before Eva will allow you to apply for online service.
Can you book for other people, but you yourself won’t be in the itinerary?
Im pretty sure that’s a hard no. EVA is very strict to prevent fraud. Thats my opinion on why their program is so complicated.
No. You’d have to transfer points to at least one person who will be on the itinerary.
If all the points are in P1’s Citi and/or Capital One account, can they transfer that directly to P2’s EVA account though? I know for Amex and Chase you can if they are an authorized user but not sure about Citi and C1.
No, that’s not possible through either one. You have to transfer the Citi/C1 points to someone and then they can transfer them to their own loyalty account.
I see. yeah that’s not gonna work for us then because P2 does not have a Citi or C1 card that allows transfers. I guess we’ll have to do the long method of transferring within EVA or do the nomination thing… ugh….
I wish there were better news.
Hard pass…too risky, too difficult. I thought at one point in the past I had seen the ability to book EVA using Chase points?
Sure, by using the point to book travel through Chase’s portal. You can also transfer to United or Aeroplan and book a partner award. Those programs will most likely be more expensive and have a small fraction of the availability, however.
Beware: EVA locked my account after my first transfer of points. Transfer at your own risk.
EVA points are useless. There is zero availability for multiple people. Wasted points.
That hasn’t been my experience. Which routes are you searching?
To be clear, would I need to transfer the other passenger’s points into their own account, or can I use my existing transfer set-up to my primary account and book both flights from there using P2’s EVA acct#?
You need miles in each account. That section was missing for some reason, but it’s back in now.
This article would have been amazing to have earlier in the year when I booked my flight to Bali. I transfered points and then stressed for a week and a half while I added my wife to my account. But Alas the flight was still available and now I have a Bali trip planned! Worth the stress!
Also you forgot to include that each person in your itinerary needs to transfer points to their own accounts. If you want to book for someone else there’s a lengthy process which includes emailing a form to EVA.
I’m assuming if you have kids then you are just out of luck and have to go through the lengthy process?
Why would having kids be an issue? It’s a pain to do all of the transfer nominees, but as long as you don’t have a family larger than six, you’re able to do it. You do have to open a separate MileageLands account for each travel companion.
So from what i understand the best way to book for your kids – you transfer miles from c1/citi to your mileage lands – pick you kids as nominees – transfer miles from your account to their mileage lands account – book the ticket ? correct ?
Thanks…that part was missing for some reason! I’ve added it back in, along with the process to nominate someone for mileage transfers.
<i>”Unfortunately, it takes both Citi and Capital One transfers take a day or two to be reflected in your MileageLands account. The seats don’t fly off the shelves, and I’ve never had an award disappear out from under me while I was waiting for the miles to show up, but there is a non-zero chance of it happening.”</i>
Well, I’d say the “non-zero” chance of that happening has just gone up – a lot.