Introduction
Awhile back, I wrote about the process of purchasing an award ticket and waitlisting for an award with EVA Air’s Infinity MileageLands program. For those who haven’t read my previous post, the general gist is that searching and booking an award ticket is cumbersome mostly due to a clunky and outdated website. The benefit of putting up with EVA’s terrible IT is there is a decent amount of award space available on EVA metal that you won’t find through other Star Alliance award programs like United’s MileagePlus and Air Canada’s Aeroplan.
In my previous post, I outlined how to book an award ticket when space is available and how to waitlist for an award if space is not available. Of course booking confirmed award space is always preferred versus taking a gamble on the waitlist, but it’s nice to have the option when nothing’s available. Keep in mind EVA Air charges an absurd $50 nonrefundable fee to waitlist (regardless of whether you clear).
Last time I used the award waitlist, I cleared about five days prior to the flight and I didn’t think too much about how the process works the closer you get to departure. This time, my partner and I were on the waitlist until check in and the process was highly confusing and frustrating. Hopefully this post will shed some light on the process in case you decide to waitlist for an award and you don’t clear early on.
Booking My Waitlisted Award
I booked a waitlisted award from Chicago to Bangkok via Taipei for myself and my partner about a week prior to the scheduled departure. I knew our odds of clearing weren’t particularly good based on using Google flights to see that only a handful of seats were still being sold in business class. Nevertheless, I thought I’d roll the dice and see what happens. If we didn’t clear, it wasn’t the end of the world other than a loss of the $50 booking fee.
The first thing that’s confusing about waitlisting for an award is the timeline to ultimately clear or not clear the flight. Essentially, EVA Air will clear you for the flight if they believe they will not sell the seats to a revenue customer. This, of course, can change on a daily basis as seats sell or people cancel their reservations. The question in my mind was, what is the latest possible point EVA could still clear us on the flight before our waitlist is canceled? A few days before departure, 24 hours, check in, at the gate, etc.?
Perhaps the information is buried in terms and conditions somewhere but I couldn’t find anything concrete. Below are the limited redemption details I could find on EVA’s site.
When I contacted EVA Air over live chat and the phone, no one could give me a definitive answer. I’m not sure if there was a language barrier, but the agents I spoke to just kept saying to keep checking back to see if I cleared and they couldn’t tell me when my ticket would be canceled if I didn’t clear. I don’t blame any support staff directly but perhaps they haven’t actually been trained well on the waitlisting process.
Another challenge is knowing where you sit on the waitlist. Unlike most airlines with modern IT, you can’t see your position on the waiting list to clear the flight and/or get an upgrade. I assume EVA Air prioritizes members with status over non-members, but the EVA agents I spoke to couldn’t share that information with me. Obviously if you are far down on the list, you’d start to look at other travel options, but in this case I had no idea what my chances were of clearing.
24-48 Hours Prior to Departure
Two days prior to departure, we cleared the TPE-BKK segment but were still on the waiting list for the initial ORD-TPE flight. I only noticed this as my reservation online indicated the status of my flight had changed and I’d need to contact EVA. In my experience, EVA Air didn’t send an email to notify me that I cleared one of the segments on my flight so it seems to be up to you to continuously check your reservation for status updates.
After sitting on hold for over an hour, the call center was able to confirm I cleared the second segment and they allowed me to select a seat and pre-order a meal. They still couldn’t tell me when EVA would cancel my waitlist for the first segment if I didn’t clear.
The day before my planned travel date, we still had not cleared the waitlist for our flight to Taipei. Right at the 24 hour mark, I accessed our reservation and noticed the status on the ticket was changed from waiting list to canceled. Again, no email notification was sent to tell me of the cancelation. I figured I was out of luck on this trip but decided to give EVA Air one more call.
Re-Listing for an EVA Air Award Waitlist
After a lengthy wait, an EVA Air agent confirmed that since I still had not cleared the waitlist 24 hours out, my waitlist was automatically canceled. Hopefully this is a useful data point to others that EVA’s cutoff to clear is 24 hours. My journey did not end here though as the agent advised me I could re-list again if I wanted to and still see if I could clear the flight.
I can appreciate that EVA Air wants to cancel waitlists 24 hours out as the odds of clearing are likely low if you haven’t by that point. At the same time, if you are going to allow people to relist within 24 hours, what’s the point of automatically canceling my waitlist in the first place? Of course the agent still could not tell me when the latest was that I could clear but I decided to re-list my award and see what happens.
Day of Departure
About 8 hours prior to departure, I still had not cleared, but my ticket was not cancelled either. I decided to call EVA one last time to see if they could give me any useful information. I asked whether or not I should show up to the airport check in counter with a possibility of clearing or if the airport staff would not even able to clear me (perhaps EVA’s corporate office is the only one that can clear my waitlist?). Again, the agent could not give me any specific details. She suggested that I just cancel my ticket as she didn’t know for sure if the airport staff could clear me and didn’t want me to risk waisting my time.
With 3 hours prior to departure and still having a waitlist status on my ticket – my partner and I decided to show up to the EVA Air check in counter in Chicago. We waited for a bit in the business class check in line expecting to be turned away. When we reached the counter, I explained to the staff member that we were on a waitlist for the flight and wanted to see if we could still clear.
She seemed a bit puzzled by what I even meant by being on award waitlist but looked up our reservation. She informed us that we were not on a waitlist and were cleared for the flight…
EVA Air Award Waitlisting Process – Pilot Debrief
I was of course ecstatic to receive the good news that we were getting on the flight. On the other hand, I couldn’t believe how dismal this whole process was to the very end. There was no communication whatsoever from EVA that I had cleared the flight, and I believe that if I had never showed up to the airport, I would never had known about it as my online ticket never showed confirmed until check in was complete at the airport.
I appreciate that EVA allows award waitlisting as an option when other many other airlines don’t offer such a feature. With that said, the process was highly chaotic between constantly monitoring my reservation online, lengthy waits to reach EVA support, and failed attempts to get clear information on the waitlisting process. A simple FAQ or guideline page on waitlisting would make the process so much more transparent for passengers, even if the process has to be cumbersome.
Of course, waitlisting for a flight is always a gamble, but EVA’s lack of details about the process made it extra stressful. If you decide to go down this path, hopefully you’ll clear days in advance like I have for another trip. If you don’t, the takeaway is you can re-list within 24 hours and there’s a chance that if you show up to the airport you’ll still clear the flight. Just don’t expect any helpful communication along the way and be prepared to monitor the reservation on your own.
As a point of comparison, Korean Air lets you waitlist for award flights, but they clearly state you have until 24 hours prior to departure to clear. They can send you a text as soon as you clear or a rejection notice at the 24 hour mark if you don’t. There’s no relisting within 24 hours either so it’s a clear and straight forward process to know when you if you will make the flight.
While EVA’s IT and waitlist process wasn’t fun to deal with, I did have an excellent flight that I look forward to reviewing in a future post.
