Eva Air’s Hello Kitty Hand-in-Hand jet is on the move again.
This time, with a beret and a baguette.
Part of a fleet of Hello Kitty-themed jets, this Boeing 777-300ER is the airline’s first long-range Hello Kitty-themed aircraft and has a collage of 19 Sanrio characters joining hands the entire length of the aircraft.
On board, it’s all about Hello Kitty, starting with the boarding passes and baggage stickers. Inside the plane, the cabin crew wears pink aprons with Hello Kitty designs and there are more than 100 in-flight service items with Hello Kitty themes – including the headrest covers, pillows, napkins, paper cups, utensils, snacks and meals.
Want to ride on this plane? EVA operates the Hello Kitty Hand-in-Hand Jet on three of its four weekly Paris flights as BR88 from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle (CDG) to Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport (TPE) on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Return flight BR87 flies TPE – CDG on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.
Airline amenity kits filled with personal care items have been handed out to business and/or first-class passengers on long commercial flights since at least the 1950s. Utilitarian at first, today these chic containers and their posh contents have become coveted and collectible and are often designed by top designers and filled with luxury products.
Here’s a look at some travelers’ favorite kits, past and present from the slide show I originally put together for CNBC Road Warrior.
A Pan Am World Airways amenity kit from the 1960s. “The President Special” was the name given to the airline’s first class service on several high-profile international routes. Courtesy SFO Museum
Courtesy SFO Museum
The SFO Museum has 355 airline kits representing 57 airlines in its collection. The earliest were called “Remain Over Night” kits and produced in “his” and “hers” versions by the Airline Textile Manufacturing Company (AirTex) based in Des Moines, Iowa.
The men’s kit included deodorant, aftershave, hair cream, a razor, shoe polish and a comb. The women’s kit had hair spray, cleansing cream, hand cream and nail polish remover, according to the SFO Museum.
Qantas, the flag carrier of Australia, partnered with Kate Spade New York and Jack Spade a couple of years ago to design exclusive amenity kits for customers traveling in the business class cabin. Each kit includes a selection of luxury Malin+Goetz skin care products as well as an eye mask, ear plugs, socks and other comfort essentials.
Delta’s Tumi amenity kit gets high marks from frequent travelers for both its contents and its re-usability. “It stands head and shoulders above the competition, with a good range of products, including lip balm, which is always something I forget,” said John Walton at Routehappy. It can also “easily be reused to pack thing likes extra batteries or headphone cords,” said Chris McGinnis, of Travelskills.com.
Singapore Airline’s Salvatore Ferragamo-branded amenity kits stand out to Paul Shrater, co-founder of the online travel-size site Minimus.biz because “not only is Ferragamo a well-known luxury brand, but the kits include travel-sized perfume and cologne, a rarity in amenity kits and a product we recently launched due to customer demand.”
Sadly EVA Air has not created Hello Kitty-themed amenity kits to go with its fleet of Hello Kitty-themed aircraft, but when the airline introduced three brand-new Boeing 777-300ERs on its North America routes in the summer of 2014, it also introduced two new colors for its sought-after Rimowa amenity kits. Royal Laurel business class passengers receive one color on inbound flights and the other outbound. Contents complement the shells’ colors and include natural lip balm and moisturizing products by HARNN, lens-cleaning cloths and adjustable silk eye masks.
All the items in Japan Airlines’ kit for First Class passengers “were perfectly color-coordinated,” said Oonagh Shiel, the editor who recently led a review of almost thirty airline amenity kits for Cheapflights.com. “The toothbrush matched the hair brush and the eye mask and we didn’t see another kit with a built-in hanger,” which open up possibilities for after-flight use in a hotel or at home, said Shiel. The airline distributes a beige canvas kits on flights departing Japan and a camel corduroy version on flights headed there.
It’s always fun to go to Everett, Wash. for a delivery ceremony for a new airplane and last week there was an especially festive event for EVA Air to celebrate delivery of the airline’s 16th and 17th Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.
Going to a delivery ceremony in Everett also offers the opportunity to shop at the Boeing Store and stock up on airplane-shaped paperclips and tins of 787 & 777 mints.
Want some of these?
You can, of course, go the Boeing Store and get some there, or you can send me a photo and some descriptive information about a fun, inexpensive and locally-themed souvenir you’ve found at an airport or aviation center.
If your souvenir is featured on Souvenir Sunday, I’ll send you a ‘reward’ from my stash of recently scored souvenirs from the Boeing Store.
Hello Kitty fans and fans of non-stuffy airplane liveries will be delighted to learn that EVA Air now has a Hello Kitty-themed plane flying to the U.S.
EVA Chairman and airline Captain K.W. Chang flew the first long-range edition of a newly painted Boeing 777-300ER plane from Taipei, Taiwan to Los Angeles on Wednesday (Sept. 18, 2013) and the Hello Kitty Hand-in-Hand Jet will now be used on three of EVA’s 17 regular weekly flights between LA and Taiwan.
The Hello Kitty Jet “experience” goes way beyond just the livery painted on the plane. There are Hello Kitty boarding passes and baggage stickers and, onboard, the cabin crew wears pink aprons that have Hello Kitty designs. During the flights, passengers use more than 100 in-flight service items, including Hello Kitty headrest covers, pillows, tissue, hand cream, hand-washing liquid, napkins, paper cups, utensils, snacks and meals.
EVA Air operates five shorter-range versions of the aircraft on regional flights from Taiwan to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Guam, each with its own theme: Hello Kitty Magic, Apple, Global, Happy Music and Speed Puff.
Here’s the Hand-in-Hand Jet, which has 19 different Sanrio characters and, according to EVA Air, is designed “to bridge cultural barriers and invite new friendships from around the world.”
Eva Air is bringing its first long-range Hello Kitty-themed jet to Los Angeles International Airport next week and, like the other Hello Kitty-themed planes the airline flies in Asia, this Boeing 777-300 ER plane will be painted with its own Hello Kitty design.
Inside the plane there will be oodles of Hello Kitty service items, some of which will certainly look like this:
This new Hello Kitty Jet will make three trips a week between Los Angeles and Taipei.
Eva Air already has five shorter-range aircraft that it operates within Asia, each with a different livery design and each with more than 100 Hello Kitty-themed passenger-service items.
