Bryan Liao Work "Blog"

Review Notes of China Airlines Premium Economy NYC → TPE

Posted On: 2023-04-09

  • WHY DON’T THESE FLIGHTS OFFER FREE WIFI YET?????

  • I appreciate that the headphones they give were noise cancelling, but why the double audio jack connector? I can’t use my own pair of headphones ;-; I wonder if there’s a reason for that… (After a quick search: Theft protection via redundancy, and more stable audio channels.

  • I appreciate that they gave slippers, even if they were flimsy. I ended up walking around in socks anyways instead of using the slippers (and I lost one) so I guess it didn’t really make much of a difference.

  • Premium economy has nice seats and ample space with large trays. Holy cow, seats that roll forward instead of tilting backwards?! 👏 Game Changer. 👏 Amazing. 👏 Beautiful. My headrest kept sliding down though.

  • Tablet software: I liked that whatever software they used had a favorite feature for marking media, but the placement of the favorite button was weird. And limiting number of favorites seemed like a weird thing to do.

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  • Food was alright, I’ve had worse airline food for sure. Haagen-Dazs ice cream though? A very nice touch 👌

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  • While the seats were generally comfortable, I didn’t have much success sleeping on the plane for an extended period of time.

Was this worth it over regular economy class? Only time will tell when I fly back…but seriously, free wifi would make the experience so much better 🥺

Edit: Flying TPE → NYC via Economy

  • Economy still uses reclining seats :/ I forgot how annoying it is when the person in front of you reclines all the way back.
  • No shopping catalog or menu for food options.
  • No care package.
  • No ice cream 😭 or mid-flight sandwich.
  • No useless slippers.
  • Gave out earphones instead of headphones for the audio, and they only worked on one side.
  • Oddly enough, I had more space under the seat in front of me here than premium economy…

It’s about 50% more expensive to fly premium economy over normal economy. Headphones (and ice cream) aside, if I could sleep properly on the flight and had more space for my legs & bag, I think it’d be worth it. Fixing jetlag ASAP would save several days of poor/disrupted sleep.