Eva: The Airline that Stole Christmas

By Joshua | December 23rd, 2005 | 2 Comments »

“Sit! Down!”

Those were the compassionate words of the Eva Air employee to my soft spoken mother-in-law in the San Francisco International Airport the other day. Her offense: arriving at the departure gate nine minutes late, after her weather-delayed flight from Denver caused her to miss her connection to Taipei and Bangkok. Actually, the doors of the plane were still open, but her ticket had already been given away.

Later, during one of dozens of aggravating calls, she found out from Orbitz that Eva overbooks all flights by 18 passengers. Not only did she receive no sympathy from Eva’s staff, but she received little-to-zero assistance whatsoever during the next three days as she tried desperately to board flight after flight—to be with her daughter in Thailand for the holidays. Each standby line resulted in nothing but another crass order to sit down.

Finally, worn out by the San Francisco rain and the Eva attitude, she’d had enough and flew back to Denver. Moral of the story: (1) Whenever possible, avoid traveling during the holidays, and (2) avoid traveling by Eva Airlines at any time of year.

After seven months on the road, half of which were spent looking forward to this week, the universe—via Eva Air—has delivered a difficult, unpleasant blow. But things could be a lot worse, we know this.

And besides, there’s one more mom on the way.