Jack's Honest Airline Reviews — China Airlines

If you’d like to skip ahead to the meat and potatoes of the actual review, click here. 

Picture this: it’s March 2026. I was planning to fly to Sydney from London for my brother’s wedding, and so I’d been watching the prices for a few weeks. Up until a couple of weeks before, we were eyeing up flights via the Middle East because we’d both flown Qatar before and thought it would be a solid option. 

Cue the war in Iran and all the ensuing uncertainty. Suddenly, prices with airlines flying through Asia were on the way up (there’s nothing airlines like more than their competitors being forced to ground their fleets), and flights with Qatar, Etihad, Emirates, and co. were unreliable. 

However, I still had the wedding to get to. Like any good Jack’s Navigator, I started frantically tracking lots of different options in the hope we’d see something within the ballpark of reasonable (under £1000 would be amazing, but under £1200 was going to have to do). That’s when this little airline I’d barely heard of popped up on my Google Flights search: China Airlines.

The lowdown on China Airlines 

Despite what you might think from their name, China Airlines are actually from Taiwan, with a hub in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei (TPE). They are state-owned and one of the three major Taiwanese airlines, alongside EVA Air and Starlux Airlines. 

According to Skytrax, they’re a 3-star carrier. From what I could see, their prices seemed comparable to the Chinese airlines. I did a bit of cursory research to see how similar the experience would be to my China Southern flight last time around (layover times seemed better; otherwise, I was expecting more of the same). 

I had liked China Southern’s prices, and the experience was generally on par with the ‘average.’ Nothing special; the cabin crew and aircraft were fine, but the food and the entertainment were lacking. And nothing could have prepared me for the exceedingly boring layover in the Guangzhou airport. 

But at a time when the market was forcing my hand, it felt like it was worth a punt. The food at least must be better, right? 

Flight and aircraft details

1. CI82 – London Heathrow (LHR) to Taipei (TPE) on a Airbus 350-900
2. CI51 – Taipei (TPE) to Sydney (SYD) on an Airbus A350-900 (Pikachu Jet CI2)
3. CI52 – Sydney (SYD) to Taipei (TPE) on an Airbus A350-900 (Pikachu Jet CI2) 
4. CI81 – Taipei (TPE) to London Heathrow (LHR) on a Airbus A350-900

– China Airlines gets bonus points for scheduling the Pikachu Jet for 2 of my flights. I didn’t realize how special that was at the time, but since they only introduced this livery in April 2026, I feel even better having experienced it twice. 

As with China Southern, the seats and legroom were as expected (32 inches), and I did have a full meal service and 2 checked bags included in my fare. 

Layovers were also well-timed—5 hours and 3 hours, respectively. 

–  Overall, there really isn’t much I’d say negatively about the experience. If I were being nitpicky, I do wish there were more drinks brought around between meals, and the cabin crew were overly cautious when it came to announcements about turbulence, but more on that later. 

Unlike with Chinese airlines, China Airlines does not fly over Russia, so you’re looking at a similar flight time as European or Middle Eastern carriers. 

General facilities

– You’ll see a pillow and blanket on your seat when you embark, with the option to pick up headphones as you board or from the cabin crew once you’re seated. No issues there except the pillow’s weirdly sharp corners—they were made of that typical starchy material that’s stiff. A minor gripe, though, especially when you walk on the plane to Pikachu smiling at you from your seat. 

The A350 had a 3-3-3 configuration with adjustable headrests, a universal power socket in between the seats (2 for a bank of 3 seats), a headphone jack, and USB-A ports. Window shades and a normal-sized seat-back screen.

Helpfully, China Airlines does offer complimentary Wi-Fi for economy class—for messaging apps only. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though: that same Wi-Fi will load text webpages, too. Otherwise, it costs $12 USD for 1 hour, $17 USD for 3 hours, or $22 USD for the whole duration of the flight. 

I have to admit, these were some of the cleanest toilets I’ve experienced on an airplane. I could hear the cabin crew regularly pop into the toilets behind us (on our last flight we were sitting right in front of them) and spray everything clean. 

– No amenity kits, which is a mark against China Airlines. But also not surprising, given these are becoming rarer and rarer as time goes on. 

Food

I was worried about food on this airline due to past experiences—I crave variety in the food I’m served; I’ve realized that now. And thankfully for me, China Airlines did deliver on that front (for the most part)! 

The menu was always listed on the seatback screen, so you knew what to expect when the cabin crew came around. A sample of the dishes on offer: 

• Pork and rice
• Beef pasta
• Pork sausage omelette
• Braise chicken with fried rice 
• Frittata 
• Congee 
• Sides and snacks include: melon, butter, bread, chocolate wafer, rice crackers, red oolong egg roll (which was seriously delicious) 

The food was Taiwanese for the most part. There was more of a variety than my previous flight with China Southern (occasionally there was a more ‘European’ option, like a frittata), but by the last flight, I expected congee for breakfast, noodles for lunch, and rice for dinner. 

For drinks, we were offered soft drinks, juice, coffee, tea, wine, and beer. Drink services happened before our meal and we were offered water/juice in between meals (maybe not as often as I’d have liked). On the long flights, we were given a small snack as well (in between our 2 meals). This was either rice crackers or a small sandwich, depending on the flight duration. 

Entertainment

One of the first things I do on a flight is check the entertainment (I can’t be the only one). There were a lot of movies and TV shows and some music and podcasts (including from Disney+ and HBO). I was impressed to find some more recent releases already available, like Michael and Project Hail Mary (I was flying in July 2026). There were a decent amount of Chinese-language films and TV shows. I actually also enjoyed playing Solitaire and came back to it several times. There were quite a few games available, but I didn’t like many of the others. 

A couple of quirks that are worth mentioning here: when we made our way to the eReader app (fueled by curiosity more than genuine interest), it did crash the system. Both my travel partner and I experienced the same thing—the screen froze, and then it went black. After about 10 minutes, the system rebooted itself. It was just a little annoyance (and hopefully only on our particular aircraft!).

The second thing is it was super annoying to scroll through all the options (it was a horizontal scroll where you couldn’t jump around your options; you had to scroll through one at a time). There are over 140 films/TV shows in each category, so we spent quite a lot of time looking through them all. 

Cultural Aspects

I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to expect from a Taiwanese airline—I had never visited the country before, and outside of talking with friends about travel anecdotes, I didn’t really have any idea of how cultural norms could have shaped the experience. But apart from a couple of things, it was exactly as I would have expected from any other airline I’d flown on. 

The PA announcements were in Mandarin first, then repeated in English. And if our end destination had been Taiwan (rather than us just transiting through it), there was a lengthy video for us to watch on the seatback screen about customs and visas. Being an island, Taiwan has stricter biosecurity laws than some other countries. That was worth paying attention to.

Staff and Service

I was happy with the friendliness of the staff—they were polite, all spoke English, and were efficient with the meal service. They sometimes sped through the cabin with a drinks tray quicker than I could ask for a cup of water, but that may also be on me for not being assertive enough. 

As mentioned above, they did seem to take things like a clean bathroom seriously, which I appreciated during such a long flight. 

The only thing I will say (and again, this may just be a personal preference) is that there was such a thing as being ‘too cautious’ with the PA announcements. To give you context, we had a decent amount of turbulence during the flights between Taiwan and Sydney (damn those strong equatorial trade winds). While I did really appreciate the heads-up when turbulence was strong, it felt like every single little bump warranted its own PA. As a result, we had a loud warning every 30-60 minutes for choppiness, which, in my experience on other airlines, would usually be left without a PA. Not the best for a sleeping cabin, is all I’ll say! 

The flights were generally on time; any slight delays were mitigated in the air. The exception was a 45 min delay from Taipei to Sydney.

Pikachu Jet 

The section you’ve probably been waiting for! Let me dish on the Pokémon plane.

Firstly, what is the Pikachu Jet? 

It’s a branded plane with a Pokémon-themed livery on the outside and Pokémon flourishes on the inside. China Airlines’ approach was to have a Pikachu pillow on every seat, with matching Pikachu headrest covers and Pokémon-themed snacks, napkins, and cups during meal times. 

In essence, it didn’t materially change the experience of the flight itself—the types of meals are the same, entertainment is the same, and the seats are the same as any other A350. But it was so, so cute. There’s also something really nice about the pride that the airline clearly has in ‘making things look nice,’ which is fairly rare in the commercial economy flight market. Yes, it’s clearly a commercial deal with Pokémon, but there’s been care in branding the water cups, the napkins, and things that the airline knows will be thrown out after each service. This attention to aesthetics carried over into the airport at Taipei, too, which overall gave me a super positive impression of Taiwan. 

How do I book the Pikachu Jet? 

The annoying thing is there’s no way to book a flight with the purpose of flying on the Pikachu Jet—it was just an awesome coincidence we got to experience it twice. It only launched in April 2026 (we flew in July), so it was even more lucky! 

Flying on this exact plane isn’t the only way you board a Pokémon-themed jet. China Airlines has another one (called Pikachu Jet CI1), which is an Airbus A320neo, a short-haul jet that flies regionally around Asia. 

If you’re really dedicated, you can plug those aircraft numbers into FlightRadar24 or a similar tracking system, track those individual planes to see which routes they typically go on, and try your luck! 

You can also try another airline; ANA, Scoot, Garuda Indonesia, and a few others also have Pokémon-branded planes. 

In the Airport

If you’ve read my China Southern review, you know that I absolutely slated Guangzhou International Airport. I had no experience in Taiwan before this, so I braced myself for the worst. Thankfully, I was very pleasantly surprised by TPE Terminal 2. 

We arrived in T1, and it was an easy transfer to T2 via train, with people directing us off the plane and corridors that were well-signed. 

We spent most of our time in the D gates, which is a long section of the terminal on the far right-hand side. They are connected to the C gates via a central middle concourse. 

The first thing worth noting is that these terminals are massive. It easily took 10-15 mins to walk between D1 and D20 (the length of the building). And to get from the Ds to the Cs, it’s a 10-minute walk again. 

Second, there were an incredible number of bathrooms. Honestly, I’ve never been in a place quite like it. Every 90-100 m, there were bathrooms with men's, women's, and accessible toilets and water-filling stations. Sometimes, there was a nursing room as well. And each of these bathrooms was well-maintained, clean, and had fancy bidet toilets, a la Japan. A traveler’s dream, especially in between long-haul flights. 

And third, they have put an impressive amount of thought and effort into the waiting areas for a lot of the gates in T2. As we were walking around, we noticed that most of these areas were themed after a different part of Taiwan—some were forest-themed, ocean-themed, city-themed, and all referenced which part of the country it was representing.

I found that extremely charming, and it’s clear the designers of the airport are really proud of their country. It also broke up the airport and gave me, as a jetlagged wanderer, a little more variety and excitement by going to sit in the forest-themed gate, rather than just a stale white room. 

C gates

I’ll start it with the C gates because that section of the terminal has a lot of shops, restaurants, and more ‘central’ amenities. It was worth our time to walk through there during a layover, even though we were flying out of the D gates. 

We were recommended the food court by my Taiwanese friend, and there we found what I can only refer to as liquid gold at Wang’s Broth. This is a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant in Taipei, but there’s now an outpost at the airport. I recommend the first set menu, which came with rice, broth with meat, a few side dishes, and some black tea. The broth was the winner here; it was rich, salty, fatty, and revived us during our 5-hour layover. 

There was also a bubble tea stall in that same area, and we sampled another one of the country’s biggest exports. 

We also found showers, spas, and some airline lounges in this section. We tried to go to the external viewing platform when we were there (because according to Google Maps we should have been able to), but I have since discovered that it’s actually landside, so don’t bother looking for it! 

D gates 

This was where both my gates were. It’s a very long, straight side of the building, so we didn’t get lost. Thankfully for me, there were also quite a few cool things to keep me occupied during my hours pacing up and down:

• A library 
• A museum 
• About 5-6 restaurants—Starbucks, Burger Land, a Thai restaurant, and a couple of Taiwanese restaurants serving noodle dishes. 
• In the area beyond gate D13 there were plenty of seats where were could lie down, and also lots and lots of charging banks.

T2 has recently been renovated, and that shows—lots of space to rest, charge devices, and refresh yourself, plus a thoughtful variety of shops and restaurants. 

Overall Rating - / 5

My final thoughts: I absolutely would fly China Airlines again. They’re a bit of an underdog, not being on the radar of many people in Europe or Australia, but they really excelled in a few key areas. And when you’re comparing their prices to Chinese airlines, which have outdated planes, poor food, and long layovers, it’s a no-brainer. Let’s hope I get to ride the Pikachu plane again before long :-) 

TLDR

Service: Cabin crew were friendly and polite. I could have done with a few more water rounds. 

Facilities: Free Wi-Fi for messaging and a Pokémon-themed plane—what's not to love? 

Food: A better variety than comparable airlines, with a mix of Chinese and European meals. 

Time: On time or early for 3 out of 4 flights, with a 45 min delay on our second flight.

Quality vs Price: Honestly great, we got a generous luggage allowance, decent food, and entertainment for generally less money than competitors.