EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Program: Everything You Need Know

10xTravel Writer Joseph Sherwood" />

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EVA Air isn’t an airline that most U.S.-based travelers think about often (or have even heard about). However, EVA is one of the two largest Taiwanese airlines and a member of Star Alliance since 2013. Plus, EVA Air is a transfer partner of both Capital One Rewards (2:1.5 transfer ratio) and Citi ThankYou Rewards (1:1 transfer ratio).

While the airline’s frequent flyer program, known as EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, doesn’t get much attention, this program may be worth paying attention to as it offers several unique advantages. For one, EVA Air is known for offering an amazing business class product, which can be booked through any Star Alliance partner program. However, EVA Air is known to make many more business class award tickets for its own flights available through its own program than any of its partner programs. This means that EVA Air is often the best program to book business class awards on EVA Air for multiple passengers.

On top of that, for booking Star Alliance awards, Infinity MileageLands is often overshadowed by other programs, such as Turkish Miles&Smiles, that are full of sweet spots. However, Infinity MileageLands allows you to add up to two free stopovers on round-trip itineraries operated by Star Alliance partners, meaning that you can visit up to three cities for the normal price of a round-trip itinerary. This can provide excellent value per mile if you have some time and flexibility and you’re willing to do some research. It’s worth noting that you can also book open-jaw Star Alliance award flights for the same price as a normal round-trip itinerary, but you can’t add stopovers on a one-way itinerary.

Apart from that amazing feature, though, EVA Air’s Star Alliance award chart isn’t anything to get overly excited about. Most of the award rates you’ll find on this chart are higher than rates you could get from other Star Alliance partner programs.

Nevertheless, in this article, we’re going to go through everything you need to know about EVA Air Infinity MileageLands. That includes the airline’s elite status program, how to earn EVA miles, how to redeem EVA miles and which of those redemption methods offer the most value per mile.

EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Program Overview

EVA Air was started in 1989 as an offshoot of Evergreen Marine Corporation, a Taiwanese container transportation and shipping company. If you’ve passed by a shipping yard, you’ve probably seen a massive shipping container with the name “Evergreen” painted across it. The president of Evergreen Marine Corporation announced at the company’s 20th anniversary celebration in 1988 that they would be starting Taiwan’s first private international airline. Only a year later in 1989, EVA Airways Corporation was formally established.

The airline would become known as EVA Air and would enjoy significant expansion throughout the 1990s. In 2001, EVA Air became a publicly listed company on the Taiwan stock exchange. Then, in 2013, EVA Air significantly expanded its codeshare network by joining Star Alliance.

As of October 1, 2023, EVA Air has 87 aircraft in service, including 34 Boeing 777-300ER models. The airline’s route network includes flights to Europe, Asia, Oceania, North America and Central America.

Plus, through EVA Air’s Star Alliance partners, you can fly almost anywhere in the world. Here are all of the current members of Star Alliance:

On top of its Star Alliance partnerships, EVA Air also has partnerships with several airlines that are not members of Star Alliance. These airlines include:

• Bangkok Airways
• Hainan Airlines
• Shandong Airlines
• Hongkong Airlines
• Juneyao Airlines

With all of these partners (both Star Alliance partners and non-Star Alliance partners), you can both earn and redeem EVA miles. However, by electing to earn EVA miles on partner flights, you’ll be forfeiting the opportunity to earn that airline’s native rewards currency. So, you need to be absolutely sure that EVA miles is the currency that you want to earn before doing so.

You can also earn status miles and qualifying segments, the metrics used to earn elite status with EVA Air, when flying with EVA Air and any Star Alliance partners. However, you can’t earn status miles or qualifying segments for flying with non-Star Alliance partners.

EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Elite Status Program

Like many other frequent flyer programs, EVA Air allows Infinity MileageLands members to achieve elite status by racking up a certain number of status miles or qualifying segments. These status miles or qualifying segments can be earned by flying with EVA Air (or its subsidiary UNI Air) as well as with any Star Alliance member. You won’t earn status miles for flying with any of EVA Air’s non-Star Alliance partners.

The Infinity MileageLands program has four membership tiers: Green, Silver, Gold and Diamond. You achieve Green status as soon as you sign up for the program. Regardless of how many flights you take per year, you’ll always retain Green status. In order to upgrade to Silver, Gold and Diamond status, you need to accumulate a certain number of status miles or qualifying segments within a 12-month period. In order to renew whatever status tier you achieve, there are varying thresholds of status miles and qualifying segments that you’ll need to achieve in a 12-month period.

Here’s a breakdown of how many status miles or qualifying segments you need to earn in order to upgrade to and renew each membership tier:

These rules are a bit confusing and different from how most airline elite status programs work.

To clarify, for example, if you want to earn Gold status for the first time, you must already have Silver status and then earn either 50,000 status miles or complete 50 qualifying segments within a 12-month period while your Silver status is valid. Then, your Gold status will be valid for the following two years from the date that you completed those requirements. However, if you want to retain your Gold status after that two-year period has ended, you need to have either earned 80,000 status miles or completed 80 qualifying segments during any 12-month period while your Gold status was active.

For international EVA Air/UNI Air flights, the number of status miles that you earn will depend on the actual mileage of your flight as well as the fare class that you’re flying in. Likewise, the number of status qualifying segments that you’ll earn for EVA Air/UNI Air international flights depends on the fare class that you’re flying in. Here is a breakdown of the status miles and status qualifying segments that you’ll earn in each fare class for EVA Air/UNI Air international flights:

EVA Air also has a Mileage Calculator tool that allows you to enter your flight details, booking class and status tier and see how many award miles and status miles you could earn for that flight.

When it comes to earning status miles and status qualifying segments on Star Alliance partner-operated flights, each partner has its own mileage accrual chart. You can view those charts on EVA Air’s website here.

Now you understand how to upgrade and renew membership tiers within the Infinity MileageLands program. Let’s take a look at why you may want to do so in the first place. Here are the benefits that are available to you at each membership tier:

As you can see, many of these benefits only apply when flying on EVA Air. So, if you don’t tend to fly with EVA Air often, it’s probably not worth trying to earn Infinity MileageLands elite status. However, if you do fly internationally with EVA Air often, then earning elite status can help you gain benefits such as bonus miles, EVA Air VIP Lounge access, reservation privileges and preferential treatment at the airport.

How to Earn EVA Miles

There are many ways to earn EVA miles, the most obvious of which is to fly with EVA Air or its subsidiary UNI Air. However, you can also rack up EVA miles by flying with one of EVA Air’s many airline partners (including all 26 Star Alliance members), spending on one of EVA Air’s co-branded credit cards, booking hotel stays or car rentals through EVA Air, subscribing to magazines and more.

It’s also worth noting that you can earn up to 1,000 EVA miles just for enrolling in the EVA Air Infinity MileageLands program. All you have to do is sign up, verify your email address and then add your physical address to your account.

In the following sections, we’ll take a look at all of the different ways to earn EVA miles and which of these ways are the most effective.

Flying with EVA Air/UNI Air

Of course, you can earn EVA miles by taking international flights with EVA Air and its subsidiary UNI Air. Unfortunately, you can’t earn EVA miles by taking domestic flights within Taiwan on either airline. When it comes to how many miles you could earn for a particular international flight with EVA Air or UNI Air, it depends on the fare class that you’ve booked, the actual mileage of the flight in miles and your Infinity MileageLands status tier. The following chart shows how many miles you could earn in each fare class:

The award miles accrual rates for each fare class are the same as the status miles accrual rates. That means that the number of award miles that you earn for a particular flight will be the same as the number of status miles you earn, unless you have Silver, Gold or Diamond status with the Infinity MileageLands program.

Silver elite members earn 15% bonus award miles and Gold and Diamond elite members earn 25% bonus award miles. Elite status members don’t earn bonus status miles on flights.

So, to demonstrate, let’s say that you take a flight with a distance of 1,000 miles in Premium Laurel class (fare code J). That means that, if you’re an Infinity MileageLands Green member, you’ll earn 1,500 award miles (1,000 miles flown X 150% = 1,500 EVA miles). However, if you took the same flight and you had Gold or Diamond elite status, you’d earn 1,875 award miles with the 25% bonus miles that you’re entitled to at those membership tiers.

Once again, though, EVA Air has a convenient Mileage Calculator tool on its website that can tell you how many award miles you could earn for any EVA Air/UNI Air international flight based on your origin, destination, cabin class and Infinity MileageLands membership tier.

Flying with Star Alliance Partners

EVA Air allows you to earn EVA miles for flying with any of its Star Alliance partner airlines. To do so, you can simply choose EVA Air Infinity MileageLands as your frequent flyer program of choice when making your booking. Unfortunately, by electing to earn EVA miles for a partner flight, you’ll be forfeiting the opportunity to earn that airline’s native rewards currency. For instance, if you elect to earn EVA miles for a United Airlines flight, you will not be able to also earn United MileagePlus miles for that flight.

The number of EVA miles you’ll earn for a Star Alliance partner flight depends on the specific partner that you’re flying with, the actual distance of your flight in miles and your fare class. Each Star Alliance partner has its own mileage accrual chart, which you can find on the Star Alliance Airline Partners page on the EVA Air website.

These accrual charts work pretty much the same way as EVA Air’s own mileage accrual chart. For instance, here’s the mileage accrual chart for United Airlines:

So, if you were to take a United Airlines flight with a distance of 1,000 miles in Economy class (fare code L), you’d earn 500 EVA miles (1,000 miles flown X 50% = 500 EVA miles).

Flying with Non-Star Alliance Partners

EVA Air also has partnerships with several non-Star Alliance airlines that allow you to earn EVA miles. These airlines include:

• Bangkok Airways
• Hainan Airlines
• Shandong Airlines
• Hongkong Airlines
• Juneyao Airlines

However, EVA doesn’t publish mileage accrual charts for these airline partners on their website, so it’s difficult to tell how many EVA miles you could earn by flying with them.

Booking Hotel Stays

EVA Air allows you to earn award miles for booking hotel stays through their booking portal (known as EVA Mileage Hotel). To do so, you can simply select the “Earn award miles” option and enter your destination, travel dates and number of guests, then hit the “Search hotels” button. From there, you’ll be brought to a list of results that match your search query as well as the number of miles you could earn for booking at each property.

The number of miles you’ll earn for each stay depends on the specific property you book.

If you’re planning on booking a hotel stay anyway and EVA Air MileageLands is your frequent flyer program of choice, then you may as well pick up some extra EVA miles by booking through EVA Mileage Hotels.

EVA Air also partners with several hotel chains and hotel booking engines that allow you to earn EVA miles for booking stays and adding your Infinity MileageLands number to your reservation. The following chart includes EVA Air’s hotel partners and how many miles you could earn for staying with them:

Car Rentals

You can also earn EVA miles for renting cars from several popular rental companies. The following chart includes all of EVA Air’s car rental partners and the amount of miles that you could earn for booking with them:

It’s worth noting that all of these car rental companies also partner with several other frequent flyer programs. So, before you elect to earn EVA miles on your next car rental, you may want to consider whether you’d prefer to earn some other airline rewards currency instead.

However, if EVA Air Infinity MileageLands is your frequent flyer program of choice, then you may as well earn some extra EVA miles for your next car rental.

While EVA Air Infinity MileageLands isn’t a frequent flyer program that’s familiar to most U.S.-based travelers, it’s worth paying attention to because of its partnerships with Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards, its position as a member of Star Alliance and its generous rules on stopovers and open-jaws for round-trip Star Alliance award flights.

Transfer Partners

Note from the editor: Citi Premier® Card is no longer available to new applicants

For many of our readers, the most relevant way to earn EVA miles is going to be to transfer points from either Citi ThankYou Rewards or Capital One Rewards.

Capital One Miles transfer to EVA Air Infinity MileageLands at a ratio of 2:1.5 (which makes this a rather unattractive use of Capital One Miles considering that they transfer to almost every other airline partner at a ratio of 1:1). Citi ThankYou Points transfer to EVA Air Infinity MileageLands at a ratio of 1:1.

Transfers from these two partners can be instant or they may take up to 48 hours, so keep that in mind when making your transfer. Here are a few credit cards from these two issuers that could help you boost your EVA miles balance:

• Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card ($95 annual fee)
• Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card ($395 annual fee)
• Citi Premier ® Card ($95 annual fee)
• Citi Rewards+ ® Card ($0 annual fee)