My flight was scheduled to leave at 11:00pm on October 31, a Thursday evening. I got to the airport @ 9:15 and was checked in by 9:30. Sat down by the gate where they had the Wizards/Celtics game on TV. Awesome, this trip is starting great, I actually had money on this game (love to gamble on sports). It turned out to be Boston’s worst loss ever, and of course my $100 was on Boston. Oh well, it killed some time. In no time the flight started to board and I got on the plane. My take on Evergreen Deluxe Class was: it’s not bad, but it’s not business. Plus my seat was in row 32 the 2nd to last row. There’s seating for about 80 in this class from rows 20-32 (Rows 1-19 are First Class & Business Class upstairs) and the make-up was across the board, Westerners, Asians and a lot of families – 10 kids that I counted, definitely not the make-up of business class. I noticed some of the seats were better than others and noted this for the trip back. Here’s the lowdown:

DO NOT LET THEM PUT YOU IN ROW 33. This is the last row, right next to the bathroom. Row 32 sucks also, because when people line up for the bathroom, they're standing right next to you. These are the prime seats that you want:

Row 20, seats C,A & K,H have nothing in front of them

Rows 24 & 26 , seats G,D have nothing in front

Row 27 is the emergency row; seats C,A & K,H have nothing in front.

A,K = Window C,H,G,D = Aisle

I learned recently on this board if you have an EVA Green Card (their lowest level frequent flier card) and book in Deluxe Class, you can get advance seating assignments over the phone) Also, when taking EVA Evergreen Deluxe from New York, with bonus miles you get 34,000 miles for the roundtrip. According to their Website (and I have yet to confirm this with one of their agents) you get one mileage award "cheque" for every 5,000 miles (so on this trip you get 6) and it "costs" 6 mileage award cheques to upgrade roundtrip from Evergreen Deluxe to "Super Business Class" for the New York to Bangkok roundtrip. If this is true, then EVA is a great bargain, because every trip made after the initial trip will cost about $1,000 for a real business class seat, which is a $3,000 seat with any other airline.

Back to the flight. The two great things about the EVA flight from New York are the short layover times and the arrival time in Bangkok. The plane stops in Seattle & you do have to get off while they refuel, but it takes off for Taipei 1 hour later. Once you land in Taipei, you get off the plane and board another plane literally at the next gate, no passport control, no nothing. This plane takes off in 30 minutes and you are 3 hours away from landing in Bangkok @ 11:00am local time.

No two ways about it, the flight is long. 5 hours New York to Seattle, 12 hours Seattle to Taipei and 3 hours Taipei to Bangkok. I was able to sleep about 6 hours on the 12-hour flight from Seattle to Taipei. I landed in Bangkok feeling fresh. It was 11:00am local time and my plan was to stay up until at least midnight and get on a regular sleeping schedule right away to avoid jet lag.

Newark is beautiful.. LOL, I assume that was a joke...

WS, Row 27 EVA Deluxe is emergency, but DON'T get the window seat as the emergency exit door protrudes a foot or two in front of you. You'll have trouble stretching out your legs. The food in EVA sucks the big one! There were also kids when I went in early October, 2002 and they can be hard on the ears. Merl