Review: EVA Air Royal Laurel business class from Bangkok to London – seriously underrated

This is our review of business class aboard EVA Air from Bangkok to London Heathrow.

Although a Taiwanese airline, EVA Air operates flights to London via Bangkok, essentially giving you a choice of two destinations in one.

There is no requirement to continue on to Taipei, so EVA has become a popular choice for travellers heading to Thailand (although I highly recommend a trip to Taiwan as well).

EVA offers a day flight return to London departing just after midday and arriving in London around 7pm. In this review I will take a look at EVA Air’s Royal Laurel business class, having tried EVA Air premium economy on the way out.

EVA Air provided my ticket for review purposes but I covered all other expenses.

EVA Air check in and ground experience

We were greeted with a busy main terminal at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport: it seems we weren’t the only ones heading home after Christmas and New Year.

EVA Air is located in Zone S and there was a short queue for business class check-in, although this was largely due to poor timing as nobody joined the queue after us! We were seen within 5-10 minutes.

The good news is that we were able to dodge the long security queues thanks to the fast track included in our ticket. I’ve never seen the queue so long at Bangkok – snaking for many metres before the escalators up – so this was a major relief.

Once airside, we headed straight to the EVA Air lounge which I have reviewed separately here. My highlight: the fresh coconuts available!

When it comes to boarding, EVA Air uses a pre-boarding system and ropes off a specific area closest to the gate for business class passengers. This results in a calm and measured boarding process.

EVA Air Royal Laurel business class

For its London flights EVA Air uses the largest aircraft in its fleet – the Boeing 777-300ER. These don’t feature the airline’s latest cabins but a slightly older version, although as you’ll see the food and service more than make up for it.

There are 39 business class seats in a reverse herringbone 1-2-1 layout split across two cabins, with six rows in the forward cabin and four rows in the rear cabin. The seats are based on the Cirrus seat that was introduced by Cathay Pacific and was widely popular in the early 2010s.

It’s still a comfortable seat although it doesn’t come with all the latest mod-cons: there’s no door, of course, and the smaller TV screen also reveals the seat’s age.

The seat introduces a sort of olive green at eye level thanks to the shrouding around the open storage, entertainment remote, USB-A and universal mains power sockets and reading light:

There’s even more storage under the console table, which is ideal for putting your shoes during the flight (EVA conveniently provides sturdy slippers).

An extremely spacious table pops out of the console table and provides ample room not just for the meal service but also an iPad or laptop.

One thing to note is that the seat does feature a bulky airbag seatbelt. These have largely been phased out on newer designs in favour of three-point seatbelts, as the airbag is very bulky, especially during sleep.

Other features of the seat include a pop-up armrest as well as a spacious foot coffin.

There are three lavatories for the business class cabin, a ratio of 1:13 which is good. The front lavatory – just behind the flight deck – is particularly spacious, although all come with Ideology soap and toiletries including aroma mist and face mist.

All three were cleaned on a regular basis – I think every time I popped in the toilet paper had been folded into a little triangle. I’ve never seen such spotless bathrooms on a plane.

EVA Air has also opted for the fun starry sky cabin ceiling:

Less usefully, there are no personal air vents.

EVA Air inflight entertainment and wi-fi

As I said in my premium economy review, the inflight entertainment is the weakest part of the EVA Air experience for a multitude of reasons.

For a start, the hardware isn’t exactly the newest so compared to newer cabins the screen is relatively small and doesn’t feature 4K resolution or Bluetooth pairing.

There also isn’t a huge amount of content to choose from, with just 139 feature films loaded, of which a significant portion are Chinese-language.

This leaves just a handful of new releases and Hollywood classics, so if you’re picky I suggest bringing some back-up entertainment on your own device.

The supplied headphones come in a snazzy case:

…. although as far as I could tell they are not noise-cancelling.

On the positive side, EVA Air is currently offering unlimited free wi-fi to all passengers, and although there were a few hiccoughs with the service on this flight (it’s still using the less-reliable older style satellite connections) it provided a convenient way to stay connected, at least when it came to text and image communication. Video was a bit more problematic.

EVA Air business class bedding and amenity kit

Whilst the seat itself might be older, EVA Air more than compensates with fantastic bedding and amenities. Already waiting at my seat was a brown tartan duvet (which I rather liked) plus a good sized and comfortable pillow:

A high-quality pair of slippers were tucked into the literature pocket, whilst a Maison Kitsune amenity kit and Jason Wu pyjamas are handed out after boarding.

The Maison Kitsune kit contained a foldable comb, facial mist, hand cream, lip balm, dental kit, reusable shopping bag and earplugs as well as a strap to turn it into a cross-body bag.

The pyjamas, meanwhile, were also good quality and came in three sizes. Here I am in mine:

Overall the seat was very comfortable in bed mode, with cabin crew adding a fitted mattress pad on request. It was very spacious: even at 6’2″ I felt like I had plenty of space top and bottom to fully stretch out.

EVA Air Royal Laurel food and service

Where EVA Air truly shines, however, is with the dining experience and crew service.

A pre-departure drink is offered, including champagne. EVA Air serves Laurent-Perrier Grand Siecle, which is what British Airways used to serve in First Class and is a step above your standard business class champagne.

After take-off crew come round to prepare your table for dinner with a large table cloth and then there’s another drinks service accompanied by nuts before the main lunch service. This is a proper five-course meal served dish-by-dish starting with a choice of starter:

• Beef bresaola, smoked duck and quinoa salad
• Seared tiger prawn, scallop with caviar, green pea puree

I went for the latter which came out as a beautifully presented cold plate:

This was followed by a pumpkin orange soup, which sounds weird but actually tasted great (it tasted a bit like marmalade!):

Then, the third course, a garden vegetable salad (mostly rocket, actually) with a choice of dressings – vinaigrette or lemon honey:

Finally, the piece de resistance: the main course with a choice of four options:

• Braised beef rib with radish and egg fried rice
• Chicken rolled with mustard grain and mushroom morel sauce and gratin potato
• Baked Chilean sea bass with hollandaise sauce and risotto
• Seared tofu burger steak with Japanese mushroom sauce and riceberry

Interestingly, for an Asian airline, was the lack of distinctive Asian vs Western options, with each dish largely a Western choice with Asian elements. I went for the braised beef rib which was delicious and tender:

You’ve got a choice of bread throughout the service as well, with some especially cute pretzels on offer:

As you can see, each dish is served individually rather than on a tray. Only the best airlines do this as it takes substantially more time to lay the table and then bus the dishes one by one as you are ready for them.

Finally, for dessert, you can choose anything from the trolley which include an assortment of cut fruit, ice cream, cheeses or fruit custard tart:

After lunch crew come through the cabin requesting you close the blinds for the rest of the flight so that anyone that wants to sleep can. I went for a nap to tide me over without ruining my sleep when I got home.

If you’re still peckish then you can also choose from a range of snacks and smaller dishes. This ranges from cookies to instant noodles, laksa noodle soup, taro cake or smoked duck and cheese panini. They’re still quite substantial though, take a look at this laksa:

And, of course, you have plenty of time to work your way through the impressive drinks menu which includes an impressive wine list (including de-alcoholised sparkling white wine), a range of signature and classic cocktails and mocktails, a choice of five beers (including Heineken 0.0), spirits and liqueurs.

Even the hot and soft drink selection is impressive, including a variety of coffees in collaboration with Starbucks as well as five different tea brands (TWG, Twinings, Wang de Chuan, Japanese tea and herbal and fruit infusions).

A second ‘refreshment’ is served relatively early, about two to two and a half hours before landing. This started with a hot towel service.

You have a choice of two options:

• Chinese style: Main course of steamed Chilean sea bass with preserved mustard greens, steamed rice, braised baby cabbage, Korean omelette, sliced chicken with Shaoxing wine and selection of fresh fruit

• Western style: Starter of smoked ham, squid with lemon, cream cheese and shrimp roe with yoghurt, main course of pesto marinated prawn with crisp shallot or mushroom and chicken pie, fresh fruit and bakery selection

The Chinese style seemed particularly popular and appeared to have run out by the third row – I’m not sure if status passengers are given first choice but this seemed oddly early. Fortunately I was in the second row and got my first choice which was superb:

The fruit plate followed, and I was pleased to see some good fruits such as mango, not just cheap cuts that travel easily that you find all too often in airplane meals.

After the meal crew handed out another hot towel as well as a selection of sweets before landing.

Conclusion

Despite the older style cabins, EVA Air is a masterclass in service and a seriously underrated (and, I suppose, largely unknown) airline. My experience on board was substantially better than many other vaunted airlines.

It’s not perfect, however. Its website and app leave a lot to be desired and do not match the high standards of the onboard experience. It’s easy to forget about the dated digital experience once you step on board and are taken care of by the slick cabin crew.

The bottom line is that EVA Air competes with the best, and with services via Bangkok you have many more opportunities to try out their service than just on flights to Taiwan.

Pros: Top of class dining from wonderful cabin crew

Room for improvement: Small catalogue of film and TV shown on older, less responsive screens and a terrible app

Verdict: Superb food and service make up for dated but still comfortable cabins.

If are looking for a good Star Alliance frequent flyer programme to credit with your flight, we discuss options here. If you are looking for ways of earning Star Alliance miles from UK credit cards, we look at your options here.