EVA Air New Routes
 

EVA will be opening new routes at Songshan to Mainland China. These were previously Transasia Airways routes.

TSA-HGH
TSA-CKG
TSA-TSN

EVA also has filed for nonstop TPE-VIE service, probably to compete with CI's new direct service that has increased to 5 weekly now.

Is there really that much demand for TPE-VIE? I'm a bit surprised VIE is so well served from TPE compared to LHR or FRA, for instance.

Vienna is mainly a tourist spot for the Taiwanese travel groups. Yields are neither good nor bad. It's an alternative destination to Munich since no Taiwanese carriers may fly there.

^ for TSA-HGH!

Is this potentially going to impact the BKK-TPE flights that are done on the 77W (and can be part of the VIE<>BKK<>TPE routing)? It would suck to be downgraded from business on a 77W (which I am currently on now) to an A321...

They are continuing the 4x weekly TPE-VIE via BKK. This is an expansion of the flights. BKK is a huge money maker for them, there is no way they will start flying the small planes. There are a lot of Taiwanese people opening factories and companies in BKK so there is quite a bit of premium traffic. The smallest I have ever seen on the BKK route is an A330.

They really should do something with that shared lounge at TSA - it is crowded and food offering was not very good.

Rumors have it BR will fly TPE to Sydney, Auckland, and Hawaii next year on 787s.

That makes sense. They used to do both SYD and HNL with the 767.

Would be great to have HNL next year.

Nice! Do you know if these routes are planned for the 787-9s or 787-10s? My guess is the -10s given the flight ranges and potential loads.

I didn't hear anything about that. In any case, I'm excited to fly the new planes!

any news on whether IAD will be launched next year? CX will start IAD with their a350

No. IAD was being studied last year though.

MUC has been rumored for a while now. If rumor hold true, it'll be some time in 2018.

Hayzel777 any ideas that there will be any new routes by EVA this coming 2018? There is basically none in 2017...

2017 was a year full of cancellations and reductions because of poor performance on mainland-china/poor Q1/2 showings/lack of deliveries(A333 replacing A332 fleet, 777 replacing returned aircraft+a332 lost). Perhaps, with the super strong Q3 and Q4 showings and the beginning of 787 deliveries, we will see new additions be added.

Another part of the reason why their were no routes was because of the fleet. The 777 cannot be sustained on many routes because of its rather high seat count(and large PE cabin)/not as fuel efficient and the A333 can't make it to places in Europe. The lack of a plane in between(787/A359) essentially left EVA with planes that could only be sent to existing destinations as additional frequencies(hence the failed SEA tack on, the adjustments of the LAX flight, new SFO flight, JFK morning flight, 777 to Ho Chi Minh CIty 2-3x a day, double daily 777 to SIN).

As stated above, the rumors milling around the company are Sydney, Hawaii, Auckland, and many more. Europe/Oceania is currently EVAs focus because of CI's strong Europe performance. They see it as another "N.A. to S.E.A" campaign for them. It was rumored last year that BCN, MAD, and MXP were all on EVA's target list because of visits by high level mgmt. Stockholm/Copenhagen could be another, EVA recently dispatched a team to Copenhagen and held a travel agents event there.

There is one new route next year that is confirmed, and that is TPE-VIE nonstop.

And instead of 1, EVA will be getting 2-4 789s next year, depending upon ALC slots!

Just curious -- Europe to SE Asia seems dominated by ME3, no? Does BR really expect to compete? TPE has geographical advantages from the US west coast, but definitely not Europe to SE Asia.

Also hard to imagine there is a market for these 2nd tier European cities when there isn't even daily TPE-London service.

Europe-TPE has lots of tour group traffic. EVA's TPE-CDG-TPE is timed perfectly just for South East Asia traffic and performs quite well in terms of connections. It is just under study right now, nothing more.
TPE-LON is supposed to go daily next year(according to CI's VP).

Seems like the 789s would be good to try longer thin routes in NA. Wonder why they only ordered 4 of them. Would be interesting to see the configurations for the 787 when they are released!

Quite certain that there no rights for Germany unless it's Lufthansa starting a route. All rights are used by CI at FRA.

There is also no reason to boost Vienna if Munich is available. EVA is upping Vienna to semi-daily (some via BKK) and Vienna has always been an alternative should Munich been available.

I'm also curious about plans for the four 787-9s, as BR also has 20 787-10 orders in place plus 6 options.

787-10 should have range for Europe, Asia, Oceania, and SEA/YVR, but probably not elsewhere in NA.

That leaves under-served long/thin routes in NA -- perhaps IAD/DFW/BOS/ATL/SAN? Each 787-9 frame could potentially support 3-4x a week service, so maybe four frames is enough.

I guess they over-ordered anticipating connecting traffic for Mainland people - that probably won't happen for a while.

How about India? Can they try India-NA West Coast market?

I remember they were considering Mumbai/New Delhi launch in 2016 but it never happened... so don't know if it's still on the list..

I thought the 787-9 were for thin routes like Brisbane and Vienna, maybe also start San Jose (which 77W cannot land) or Sydney.

However, looking at recent performances, I believe EVA has problems filling those extra 77Ws K got and they have to adopt them to all routes possible (hence all those increases, and the next one to try is VIE). Those that cannot sustain will be cut (IST), reduced (SEA) or maybe have the 787-9 put them (such as ORD) on stabilizer and see if it works.

Another word, they are in trouble?

Hopefully they don't get/convert more 77Ws that are 10-across if they can't fill the seats already.

Overall Yields/Loads look pretty good (Financial Reports - EVA Air | Global) in 2017, especially last quarter and for cargo. Revenue is up 8.4% from 2016, so unfortunately I suspect the conversions will continue. I imagine there is significant variation across routes and seasons, so it makes sense for them to downgauge 777 routes to 787 (-10s or -9s depending on range requirements).

Well, filling extra 77Ws on routes is different than adding a seat into a row. You are only adding about ~30 seats to a daily flight (~210 seats) which allows you to sell more cheap seats in comparison to adding 330+ seats per extra flight operated. Plus one doesn't usually add just a flight, it's at least 3-4 weekly. That's totally different operations (extra ground staff, additional catering etc.) and sales (more pax at different targeting hours) needing to be met.

Compare to the ambitions that K had when he was operating EVA, what the current management did was to replace existing aircrafts with the new ones. However, the amount of 77W fleet EVA owns is still quite some, so new routes and/or frequencies to existing destinations are to be expected. I mean when EVA slashes JFK to 10 weekly and SEA back to daily, the added capacity had to go somewhere. As of now it's going to SFO and next year to VIE, so we will see how they do clashing against CI on both routes. The YYZ damage did not even cost their operations to change, so one can see how flexible the current EVA fleet offers. They are still able to add more flights.

Cargo is doing quite well. The fun part is, couple years ago EVA almost dropped cargo to just belly loads.

I think the 787-9s are good additions to the EVA fleet, just not enough. I am unsure what the 787-10 is there for, though. The range it has cannot operate most NA routes (except SEA, YVR) so not all the 77Ws can be replaced. It may help on some of the European routes (AMS), but not sure if EVA needs 20 for just these flights. Yes, the 787-10 can be used on Oceania and regional as well to replace the 333 (which is still quite young for EVA in terms of usage), but that will also clash into 321 operations (which will hurt cause the mainland China operations are not doing so well and that's where majorities of the 321 were originally intended to operate). The 787s will not affect EVA until they arrive and is in operation, so we will see how EVA makes it work.

This year is a pretty good year for most airlines (as long as you don't fuel hedge the wrong way). EVA has finally passed CAL in the Pax revenue department, though the yield (not as important) is not very good. We will see how it goes. The revenue department is closing in to 2012 level in terms of percentage and now both have comparable figures.

Are there plans to retire more of the earlier 777s as well? It would make sense if there were options to convert some of the 787-10 to 787-9s. If they do fly the 787-10s to Oceania and Europe, then they would probably have to use two different configs, one regional and one long haul.

They will return the leased ones. Next one should be 16703.

Oceania as regional? I think Oceania pax will be pissed :p

What about cabin refreshes for RL to match the new 77Bs? They were really playing up the "new look" last month.

The original announcement said that the 787 deliveries would start in 2017 and run through 2022 (presumably Boeing delays have pushed this back a year or so). This timeline would coincide with ~12 777-300 and 3 A330-200 frames hitting the 12-15 year mark, which is when BR seems to retire wide-body frames. So about half of the 26 deliveries could be normal fleet refresh.

They need sufficient 787 aircraft(with ETOPS and enough crew training hours) before they can retire the A332. Currently, A332 is the only plane that can make it to BNE(777 is not economical).

CI has remove CI15/16 from schedule and revert CI3/4 back to 777. A net loss of around 600 seats to SFO.

Wondering how BR 7/8 load factor is. Perhaps we may see three daily to SFO once 787-9 is delivered. 1x787-9 and 2x 77W could work well. Perhaps may be sending 787-9 to SJC would be good.

I think b-16703 lease is extended to 2024 so EVA might maintain 34 777-300ER for a while.. a330-200 could be gone if they find ways to get rid of them since they own it.

EVA is too premium and "expensive" for those routes. Best to leave it to the carriers who specialize in low end price sensitive markets.

Are their last A330-200s sticking around for a while? Thought they were on the way out but my TPE-CGK flight in September just swapped from a -300 to an ancient -200.

Yes. It's the only aircraft that is able to operate the BNE route(specially designed last two center rows of Economy for crew rest). They only have 3(I think?) left. They'll be gone when 787s come in.

I'm also wondering when will EVA (or China airlines) get to add more PVG/SHA flights... They are adding more flights to China, but just not being able to add any shanghai ones.