TPE airport
After a quick 50 minute car ride, I arrived at TPE airport. Unfortunately, my phone died just as I was pushing back, so a majority of this review will be in text.
China airlines uses counters 7,8,9, as far as I know, in terminal 2.
We chose CI24 because first of all, Ontario has much less lassneger traffic, and second of all, it was closer to where we were staying.
This time at TPE isn't very busy, so security took literally less than 5 minutes, which is impressive for an airport so big.
My gate was D6. China airlines uses the D,A gates, and EVA uses the C,B gates. SJX uses both.
Dinner ( not at the lounge. )
We had dinner at some sort of food court in the airport. There were tons of restaurants, and we chose some beef noodle soup. As always, the food always tastes better at the airport, but I'm a natural beef noodle soup lover, so that doesn't change anything.
After something like an hour and an unreasonably expensive drink, I headed to my gate D6. My plane was B-18001, the oldest 777 in CAL's fleet. It is relatively young for a 777, at only 10 years old. It has 358 seats, with 40 business seats in a 1-2-1 configuration, 62 premium economy seats in a 2-3-2 configuration, and 256 economy seats, in a 3-4-3 configuration.
Boarding started at around 8:45, 15 minutes behind schedule.
Upon boarding, China Airlines gives you the option to get headphones during your walk down the jet bridge.
As soon as I boarded, the crew greeted us kindly and showed us the way to our seats.
The 777 has a pretty big IFE, but I didn't really use it for anything besides listening to music.
A nice wing view with a TK 777 next to us.
The 777 has a safety card and an in flight magazine.
It also has a comfy pillow, but somehow I still wasn't able to sleep. From this point on, there will be no more pictures.
We pushed back at around 9:30, 20 minutes behind schedule. One of the engines actually started at the gate, which was unusual, but I assumed it was just to save time, since we were delayed.
We took at at 9:47, 37 minutes behind schedule. After around 30 minutes, the meal service started, with pre-ordered meals first. My meal came after around an hour, while we were already cruising at 31000 feet.
I honestly forgot what I had, but I think it was pasta or something like that. Either way, it was delicious. So much so that I wanted more.
My plan originally was not to sleep, so I can better adjust to the jetlag, with the 6 PM arrival time. However, I soon found it difficult to keep my eyes open, but also difficult to fall asleep. This was probably because I was trying to listen to music.
I eventually found myself asleep, but not for long. When I woke up, we were still over Tokyo. After that, I tried my best to sleep, but couldn't succeed. I didn't use the IFE either. I was just trying to find some good music to listen to. The music options that CI had weren't the type of music people usually listened to. I eventually found 2 albums that I listened to, which included a Newjeans song in 1 of them and some Yoasobi songs in the other.
I usually listen to music to fall asleep, but since I had earphones and also a neck pillow, the neck pillow was pushing the earphones out, which was making it impossible to sleep.
Eventually, I slept for another hour, and when I woke up, we had step climbed up to 32000, with still around 9 hours 20 minutes left in the flight. I pretty much did nothing for the next 3.5 hours, before finally falling asleep. When I woke up, we were at 35000 feet, and half across the Pacific. I again did nothing but listen to music for the next hour, before falling asleep again and waking up to us at FL360. After that, I didn't sleep.
Around 2 hours before arrival, we were served breakfast. I quite literally forgot what I had, but I vaguely remembering it being average.
After a painful yet fun 11 hours, we started our descent, and eventually touched down at 6:17 PM, 17 minutes behind schedule.
This was a very nice yet interesting experience with China Airlines. My mom thought that it was hard to sleep and that she would fly Starlux next time. I don't really know how to feel about that. All in all, I enjoyed the experience and I would fly their 777s or A350s again, just not on a long haul.
Nice to see a review on this exotic route! It's definitely cool when secondary airports get long-haul routes like this. Also a very convenient way to avoid the hellscape that is the 405 and LAX when flying to/from Asia, haha.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for your comment! I can definitely see why CI decided to fly to Ontario, and I'm surprised that EVA didn't join in to spice things up a bit. Luckily, we have Starlux for that :) I would 100 percent prefer Ontario whenever you are in the L.A. area, given the disaster of LAX. If only more airlines flew there :(.
Again, thanks for commenting!
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Thanks for sharing this FR. As Kevin said, it has always been a cool route for an Asian carrier to operate this secondary airport route since ANA pulled out of SJC. Would have expected CI to offer a better experience in terms of comfort.
ex-TPE catering is good and I like how CI has such extensive partnerships with local restaurants offering so many pre-order meal options across their classes.
I dislike the later departures east-bound for this reason. BR/JX leave even later and arrive around 22:00 which is even harder to adjust. JX might be better from comfort perspective being on an A350, but comes with these worse flight time compared to CI6 (also A350 in low season).
Hi, thank you for the comment!
I'm pretty sure ZIP air flies into SJC from NRT, so at least it's getting some exposure now.
Unfortunately, CI only offers midnight departures on their SFO and SEA route, with ONT being slightly earlier and LAX having 2 flights per day with CI6 having a much better 4:55 PM STD, like you said, and CI8 being another midnight departure. BR however, offers much more flight options with 3 flights per day to LAX and SFO. BR18 and BR12 both depart at around 8PM and arrive at 4PM, which in my opinion is much better than 8-9 PM. BR6 and BR8 leaves in the morning and arrives in the morning, and that is a deal-breaker for some people, since they do not want to get up at 6:AM. JX is a newer airline so they can't really offer that much flights. JX2, JX32 and JX12 both depart at midnight, while JX6 departs at 8PM.
Since TPE is CI's hub, it's expected to have at least somewhat decent catering compared to other airports. And they did indeed deliver in that category. I'm flying CI3 out of SFO in 2 weeks so I'll see if the catering is any different :)
Again, thank you for commenting!