China Airlines releases a fair number of award seats, so it's definitely something to consider when flying to or from Asia. Had award seats been available, my flight would've cost 95,000 SkyMiles with Delta and 85,000 with Air France.
We ended up paying for my ticket directly on the China Airlines website using the Platinum Card® from American Express, which earned 5x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on airfare purchased directly with the airline or Amex Travel. Since there wasn't any availability for the dates I needed to fly, I set some ExpertFlyer alerts, but ultimately no award seats became available. You can easily search for award space on Delta's website or ExpertFlyer. China Airlines is a member of SkyTeam, so you can redeem your Delta SkyMiles or Air France-KLM Flying Blue points for award tickets on China Airlines. In my case, I was already in Seattle, so decided to limit my searches to flights from the West Coast. As one of the largest airlines of Taiwan, China Airlines unsurprisingly has flights to five North American cities including Honolulu (HNL), LAX, New York-JFK, San Francisco (SFO) and Vancouver, Canada (YVR) to its hub in Taipei (TPE).
