skimthetrees

Awesome! That will be a nice flight.

Zack Lund

Anyone been successful in using *A for the Chicago-TPE flight on EVA? Have a flight in December that I keep getting the dreaded Inventory Not Available. Checked EF and while there are about 20 business class seats available, no Z or I class inventory.
What are the odds that this is because they are trying to sell the seats first before release for any type of upgrades? Busy time of year so I can see that being the case. Hope that's the case and I can get lucky and they don't end up selling/open some inventory for upgrades

skimthetrees

Why not call EVA and ask if any flights in your range have Z availability and change your flight to one with availability if there are any?

gengar

Yes.

EF doesn't show Z inventory.

rayting

Hey all, fairly new person here. After reading through EVA business class reviews, getting stoked, and reading through the forum to figure out how to upgrade, I finally completed that round trip for SFO-TPE in October.

I know it's thoroughly documented already. Still, I was unsure when going into this, and hopefully I can help out another new person going the same route. My findings and notes:

• You need full fare economy to upgrade, so when searching/booking choose Economy Class > Economy Plus. They have several fare classes and weird naming schemes, but it'll show the fare class on the sidebar. I got fare class B, I think Y is called Economy Plus too.
• Call the local EVA office and ask for fare class Z, or award space. I read somewhere about calling the EVA office in Taipei, but the local office is enough. Seems many people call them up as they were familiar with the upgrade process and award space.
• Upgrade availability is tricky, have backup dates/times in mind. One service rep told me people do it months ahead of time (unlike me, 2 months before my flight) while there's a lot of availability, but didn't mention more spaces opening as the flight gets closer. He did say >4 or so spaces is preferred, but I found I was able to upgrade my flights with 3 spaces and 1 space (I got lucky!), while it didn't go through on a flight with 5 spaces. It just depends how many are available for *A.
• If upgrade isn't available, just request a refund. You should get an email confirmation quickly, but it'll take 2-3 weeks to refund.
• United's upgrade page was slow and crashed once when requesting upgrade. Someone mentioned the service was unavailable at some point, but it worked for me. Look up your booking on EVA to confirm, mine immediately changed to "Royal Laurel Class/Z".
• I was wondering what class you get upgraded to (EVA's site shows business, royal laurel, premium laurel), but evidently you go straight into Royal Laurel.
• As mentioned elsewhere, upgrade is 30k miles each way

Thanks everyone on here for sharing your knowledge. Going to be cool to go on basically my first non-economy flight ever!

crownkingdomvision

Fairly new to this and I have been a lot of reading.

My flight will be LAX to TPE on Oct 6th.

I tried upgrading to Business with EVA "B" class fare - on Aeroplane but I got a message that SAUA wasnt available. I then called into customer service and they confirmed Z upgrade seats also not available.

Does all of mean seats arent yet released by EVA? Does anyone have experience with LAX-TPE upgrades? Thanks.

crownkingdomvision

Wow lucky! Looks like you're able to snag the upgrade already and its 1-2 months out. Wondering whats up with LAX-TPE route!

skimthetrees

Whatever inventory was already released has been taken. If EVA determines the loads warrant it they will release more inventory at some point but it may not be until much closer to departure.

There are 3 BR flights a day from LAX. Have you checked Z space availability on the other flights that day? How about the day before or after? If there is availability on another flight you could change to that flight and confirm the upgrade now, otherwise you will have to keep checking and hope they open up more upgrade space.

gengar

As noted in this thread and others, it is advisable not to mention award space (or even SAUA / upgrade space) as that can only serve to confuse the agents. Just ask for Z space only.

Also, the reason to call the Taipei office is that the agents there are more experienced and helpful. At other offices, you really don't know what they're doing. At the US office for example, the agents have come up with crazy excuses not to do things and end the call as quickly as possible.

As well-documented in this thread, SAUA needs Y/B/K on BR to upgrade. B fare doesn't always show up on the website, so calling BR to book is sometimes necessary to get the lowest SAUA-eligible class. Don't just book the Y fare if the B fares don't show up. Finally, as with all awards, always find availability first, then book the ticket.

crownkingdomvision

Very interesting data point here and I do think we all know about it already but it suggests that EVA isn't making inventory available until much closer to departure. I decided to check for Sept 1st flight - this coming SUNDAY (BR11) and viola, plenty of availability(Z fare class)! I think these upgrades will work themselves out closer to departure date so I'll just wait until closer to my Oct 6th departure, perhaps 2 weeks out and go from there. Another thing that I noticed is the fare price remains very consistent - fare for same class of ticket (B) is same for Sept 1st flight or Oct 6th..

rayting

When I called the SFO office I just asked how many are available for fare class Z and they understood both times it was for upgrade space, but it could be I got lucky.

I didn't know of K, and also didn't ask for Y over the phone, just booked off the website. Likely gave EVA some free money there, but lesson learned, good to know for a future trip. Thanks for helping out a noob.

carlos.htx

Out of curiosity, how do you check the availability of the Z class? I just checked their website and did a mock booking and the lowest i found in business was D.

I also just booked my IAH-TPE flight for January and also got the dreaded "Inventory Not Available" message in the United app. Keep us posted when you get yours.


Thanks!

gengar

As mentioned in past posts, it is not possible to check Z availability online. It is necessary to call in to EVA.

LowAltitudeFlyer

While this thread is primarily focused on using UA miles on a SAUA for EVA, can anyone confirm that all *A partners (Aeroplan, Avianca, Lufthansa, etc) have access to the same bucket of EVA upgradeable space as UA? For example, US-TPE requires only 25K Aeroplan miles (per their still-published chart) compared to UA's 30K, so if one needed to transfer CC points to an airline to book the upgrade, Aeroplan makes more sense. Avianca is another partner that requires 30K miles (per their still-published chart). The downside I see to this is in the event other *A members don't have the same availability, one is now stuck with 25K-30K points in Aero/Avianca/etc.

Dave510

It's not possible to confirm they have the exact same spaces, but I've always used Aeroplan and never had issues checking with Z availability.