Review of China Airlines flight Taipei → Amsterdam in Economy

Hi all,

Unfortunately this is the last flight of my Asia trip of 2023 and it will be the longest flight I ever took in terms of duration as the airline is required to travel via a southerly route due to restrictions with the Russian airspace as most of you guys know. It's also a flight I'd try to get some sleep on given that it is a red-eye flight and I'll be needing to go to work the day after my arrival. The entirety of the trip reports you can find below.

Flight

Given that I arrived from Bangkok Suvarnabhumi about 35 minutes ago at Pier A, which is somehow a bit left out in terms of quality and atmosphere compared to the other piers, I had quite a walk to get to the nearest lounge for us. Plaza Premium was the lounge that gave me access with my priority pass and can be found on the upper floor between Pier B & D

Upon doing the formalities at check-in, I grabbed myself a beer which you can grab yourself via the draught.

A cooking station was present with a few options to be prepared by the chef.

Though you also had some hot food available as buffet, which to be fair was lacking in quality.

The seating section of the lounge was in an enclosed space and felt a bit awkward if you had someone across of you.

Bedrooms, VIP Seating & Showers were available and required additional payment if you opted for them.

In the end I just took some snacks to satisfy my hunger next to the beer.

We checked out of the lounge about twenty minutes to our boarding time as the walk itself to our gate took about +/- fifteen minutes including some products we bought in the store as gifts.

Gate A6 was used for our departure to Amsterdam, which was very overcrowded given the small seating section for the type of aircraft we'd be on. Once again an anouncement was made that boarding was delayed by ten minutes or so, but that we would depart right on time.

Unfortunately this gate also meant that I'm unable to spot our aircraft from any angle, but B-18917 was the bird that was going to bring us to Amsterdam, which is a 5.7 year old Airbus A350-900 that has solely flown for China Airlines in it's young existence.

Seat 64A was my seat for the flight and came with plenty of legroom as you can see below. The only annoying part of this row was that the window was aligned with your shoulder making it very uncomfortable to rest on the wall with your head during flight.

The seat came with a large and clear IFE screen.

Impression of the cabin.

View from my seat. Pushback was eventually two minutes past our scheduled departure time.

About five to ten minutes later, we were rolling for departure to Amsterdam

With a right hand turn in Southeasterly direction on our way to Amsterdam.

The literature in the seat pocket contained a duty free magazine, sickbag and a safety card. The complimentary earphones were handed out in case you didn't pick one in the gate, however unlike our first flight, no slippers were offered to us.

Shortly after the meal service was engaged and options of today's flight were Spicy Noodles with Pawns or Chicken with a Potato Gratin. I opted for the spicy noodles. As a side dish we got some mushroom salad, some old fruit, bun and a cookie in the shape of a bear face. It also came with a bottle of water.. Complimentary drink was served by the 2nd flight attendant.

The food itself was poor I had to say with little taste to them. The noodles weren't spicy at all, the shrimps weren't really fresh and the fruit had a weird aftertaste to it. Definitely not how an Apple is suppose to taste.

Clean up followed about fourtyfive minutes past the service and cabin lights were dimmed. The flight attendants on this flight were friendly, but were not as good as I had on my flight to Taipei from Amsterdam about three weeks ago. In the next 11 hours I've seen them twice or three times walking around with complimentary water and snacks. You constantly had to buzz the call button if you wanted to have a drink. The snack service to be honest consisted only of sandwiches like the one below which were bland and dry, but definitely filling.

Around 10 hours into the flight, I had to go to the toilet and was up to now in a good state and rather well-maintened in terms of Cleaning.

Amenities in this bathroom consisted of a soap and a hand lotion.

Lights were turned on about three hours to landing. An odd thing is that the seatbelt sign has been turned on throughout the entire flight and haven't been turned off at all. They were regularly re-armed to show us that we were in an area of turbulence, but at a certain point after the re-arming of the seatbelt, people started to ignore the signs. Understandable as I figured out that the rewc simply forgot or did not bother to turn them off.

With about 2.5 hours to landing, we received our second meal service. It was either a chicken sausage with omelet or noodles with fish. I opted for the 2nd dish as I hate omelets on planes. The fish wasn't really overwhelming and did look more like tofu until I tasted it. The dish itself was much better than the first meal, but overall not that impressive. Quite disappointing to be fair as I had higher expectations of this flight out of Taipei rather than out of Amsterdam. It again came with some old weird tasting fruit, a strawberry yoghurt and a hot bun. I asked for a coffee next to it.

Clean up was done about 90 minutes to landing and it gave me an opportunity to capture our row of seats we've been on for a solid 14 hours yet.

About 25 minutes to landing, the captain informed us about the weather in Amsterdam and informed us that we were descending into Amsterdam while the sun was rising.

Miserable weather in Amsterdam as landing was performed in misty, but rainy condition with a total delay of 1 minute :)

After a fifteen minute taxi to our gate G7, disembarking followed soon in a rather quick pace, however this gate also meant that we once again did not get a view of the aircraft that brought us over.

Immigration wasn't busy at all and took about 10 to 15 minutes to clear. I did not use the self-service as my wife does not have an European passport and could not opt for it, but if I had used it, It would have probably been about a minute.

Luggage took another solid 30 a 40 minute to be on belt as our luggage was one of the last to be placed on the belt. 

Once collected, we were off to our car to drive home.

Thanks for stopping by and Merry xmas to you all!