Hello Kitty Welcomes You – or – me Onboard

I recently had the opportunity – actually, I’m not sure opportunity is the right word here. Perhaps I should say, I recently unintentionally ended up on a Hello Kitty flight with EVA Airlines. Oh, what a treat. I learned a very valuable lesson – when you’re booking through a third-party website or say, a corporate booking site, it doesn’t flag the flight as a Hello Kitty flight. There’s no warning that you’re booking a flight on an airplane that is drenched in pink and pastel colors. No pop-ups alerting you that everything is in the shape of Hello Kitty. No checkbox saying, do you understand you’re going to be flying for 3 hours with people obsessed with Hello Kitty, many of them children?

Here’s what an Eva Air Hello Kitty plane looks like from the outside.

I was lucky, I happened to catch two planes that day!

Here’s what it looks like on the inside

The flight attendants are way too happy and in way too much pink. (The girl in the seat next to me was more than happy to pose for a picture!) Not a fan of the pink bow either. You’d be surprised – or maybe not – how many people wear all their Hello Kitty attire and accessories on the flight.

The seats have a gray pattern adorned with a Hello Kitty head rest cover (does that thing have an official name?) and a Hello Kitty pillow. Yep, even coach gets pillows.

Business Class has a similar color scheme…sans the Hello Kitty head rest cover, and the pillows are much larger. It’s not a bad seat, actually.

Everything has a kitty or flower on it. Look, even the butter is pretty.

In an all time first for me, I actually asked the person next to me if I could take a picture of her child’s meal. I’ve never done that before, but I couldn’t resist. Hello Kitty rice – look closely, the carrot is in the shape of a bow! Hello Kitty shaped fruit in the center of the “bowl/try/dish”, Hello Kitty cheese on the far right and a Hello Kitty dessert – still not sure what that was exactly.

Need to wash your hands onboard? No worries, you’ll find some Hello Kitty soap in the toilets.

I have to say, this was one of the stranger flights in my life. I’m not exactly sure I’m a fan of “theme” airplanes/airlines. The paint job on the plane is enough, let’s leave it at that. You really do have to fly Hello Kitty Airlines aka Eva to understand how extreme the admiration is for Hello Kitty. It’s great that Hello Kitty I mean Eva Airlines is joining Star Alliance, but I’ll stick to traditional flights from here out!