China Airlines

✅ Trip Verified | Frankfurt to Taipei on Premium Economy and Taipei to Singapore on Economy: Why did I pay extra for this so called "Premium Economy seats"? The seats do not recline but just kind of slide forward a little. Essentially there is no functional recline and they are the most uncomfortable overnight seats I have ever flown on (and I fly a lot). If you are taller than 165 cm there is definitely no chance to sleep (may be fine for Asians but not for Westerners). That's a nightmare if you fly for more than 12 hours. The people who designed those seats probably never even had the chance to sit on them because otherwise such seat would not be existing. It's absurd, but I only got to sleep when I was finally sitting on a narrow coach seat in Economy from Taipei to Singapore. Other than that: The aircraft couldn't depart on time, we had to wait more than two hours sitting in the aircraft due to difficulties at Frankfurt Airport. Staff was chatting with each other, but not looking after passengers, they didn't serve any beverages during these 2 hours! In Taipei China Airlines didn't manage to transfer my luggage to my connecting flight to Singapore. My bag was missing in Singapore, I had to wait 30 hours for my bag to be delivered to my hotel the next day. Staff tried to be nice. Food and beverages was okay, but no difference to Economy (plastic, plastic, plastic and no choice of meals). All in all: a disastrous experience. In all aspects (seat quality, service, food, beverages) far from what you can expect from other airlines in Premium Economy (e.g. Lufthansa, Austrian and Cathay are much better!)

✅ Trip Verified | This was my first time flying on China Airlines. The cabin design of the A350 was gorgeous, classy, yet modern. The seat pitch was unbelievably wide. I can literally stretch my leg comfortably and I had no issue falling asleep. However, the design of the seat pocket itself is a little bit uncomfortable to me. It was quite hard for me to store my stuff in the seat pocket, the reason being the seat pocket is too low, and the accessories storage just below the PTV is far too narrow. The experience though was satisfying.

✅ Verified Review | Seat was comfortable, I sat on the 7th row, which is by the emergency exit. Plenty of leg room and easy to get assistance from FAs as they were so close by. The IFE system worked fine, a little bit small for but still have videos and music to choose from.

✅ Verified Review | I flew several A330 from China Airlines and they have small differences from seat model from aircraft to aircraft. Most of them aren't spacious at all. I am 6' (183) and my knees were stuck against the back of the seat in front of mine. The IFE is ok (most A330 I flew had very small screen monitors), there is no wi-fi, no power sockets and blankets are thin as a sheet of paper (and you really need some of them as it is so cold in the cabin)

✅ Verified Review | The A340 seat is okay but looks old. To avoid to disturb the pax behind me, I didn't recline my seat back a lot, due to no big space for legroom. The entertaiment system box is under the seat, so you have less space in the legroom very uncomfortable. The seat pitch is normal of the rest of the airlines, not recommend to place anything in the seat pocket.

The A340 seats were too narrow and uncomfortable. The remote, because of the narrowness, was difficult to extract from the arm. My food tray which had to be extracted from the arm of the seat folded out with no clearance between it and my body so all my food was not level. I will never take another flight with China Airlines because of this. The very long flight from BKK and Amsterdam was not a pleasure.

I am a large man and it was agony flying from Los Angeles to Bangkok. No power plug for the laptop. Seat rows too close to use the laptop as the space was too small to unfold it. Seats were fine for small framed people But for large people it made for a very long trip. And forget sleeping not enough space for that without rolling into somebody.

This was one of the older Boeing 747-400s in the China Airlines Fleet so therefore there was a lack of entertainment in Economy Class (only an inflight magazine was provided even on a long flight like ours which was from Vancouver to Taipei). Some of the facilities (restrooms etc.) were also slightly older-looking. However I understand that China Airlines does have some newer 747s with personal televisions at every seat as well as nicer seats (I've been on one of these as well) and these are much more suitable for long-haul flights.

These seats are well-designed and are very suitable for long-haul flights like the one I took from Taipei-Vancouver. The seat had a personal television as well as a massaging footrest. Though I'm small in size I still found getting out into the aisle a bit difficult.

China Airlines A330 configuration means that in the front Economy cabin AB seats have a wider seat pitch than the other seats as there is one less row of seats on the AB side.