Trying to juggle all of the last steps in preparing to travel out of Phoenix made the flight tickets pretty difficult to book in advance. Timing is known to be the one constant as far as affecting airline ticket sales price. We could have really saved some money by booking well in advance; however, we were looking to rent our home. So we decided to wait until we had a tenant signed up to move in our house. This process turned out to be much quicker than we originally thought. Thankfully we were able to get someone in pretty quickly
When we need to look for reasonably priced airline tickets, we turned to Google’s ITA matrix or Hipmunk . ITA matrix compares numerous airways while allowing the option to filter by pretty much anything you can think of. It then forwards you through one the big traveling brand names such as Travelocity in order to find the reputable and cheap sale. The most important stipulation for us was the price. We didn’t really care about the connecting flight location or what country the airline originated.
To us, there were pretty much 3 tiers of airlines to Asia from the US to choose from. There were the really cheap Chinese airlines that we are too scared to risk being in the air with. The semi-cheap US and little known airlines that offer mediocre entertainment and decent food. Lastly, are the Japan and Korean airlines that are a little over-priced, but treat you like a king even in the economy seats. We decided to save our money and go with EVA airlines, which we considered to be bordering in the first and second tier.
EVA airlines is a Taiwanese airline that we really didn’t know anything about. The price for EVA was about $100 dollars more than the lower quality airlines, but still about $200 dollars cheaper than the next tier of airlines. We booked the flight to leave New York at 1:30 am and after 18 hours we would transfer in Taiwan. We were both really impressed by EVA. The seats had plenty of room, and the entertainment was really good. The whole plane seemed really clean and had plenty of the little things that make a big difference. Each seat was given head phones, sleep masks, toothbrushes, pillows and blankets. Touch screens with movies just out of the theaters from both Hollywood and Asian countries were on each seat. They also had options to watch older movies and television shows, as well as play games. We were given two solid meals allowing two options each along with multiple drink opportunities.
Half sleeping for about 8 hours and watching about 4 movies made the trip not terrible. Before we knew it, we were in Taiwan starving and ready to move around. The airport in Taiwan was cool. There was really good food stalls, and lots of shops to check out. We had about 3 hours to mess around, and took full advantage of it.
Happy Travels!
