Will I be able to access Eva lounge on arrival at Taoyuan airport?

Question

I'm leaving for Taiwan from JFK airport. And this is going to be my first time at the airport so I'm not familiar with the airport. The situation is, I'll be arriving 6 hours earlier (around 5am) than the rest of my group because of the ticket situation. I was wondering if I will have access to the EVA lounge so I can wait for the rest of my group over there and take a shower.

By access I mean, after I got off the plane will I be able to walk to the lounge if I don't checkin my bag and I don't want to go through the immigration just yet.

I have a Star Alliance Gold card that I can access the lounge, what I'm not sure is that on arrival without any connecting flight will I be able to walk to the lounge at all?

The reason is I'm not sure what am I going to do for 6 hours and I check with the hotel, I'm not able to do early checkin on that day as it's all booked up.

Answer 1

Theoretically no. However their are two threads over on flyertalk discussing exactly this. In the first one, a person claims regularly to pass through airside transit without a boarding pass check in order to reach the lounge. They then use their EVA Diamond card to access the lounge.

The second newer thread contains information from an EVA Lounge Host:

Arriving passengers (*G & RL) would not be allowed to use the EVA Lounge facilities without connecting flight ticket.

This is the most common situation for lounge access unless there is a specific arrivals lounge.

Indeed a later post from someone attempting access in a similar situation states:

made it up through transit security but was flat out denied at the lounge entrance and they wouldn't budge, although I didn't push them to ask management.

Bear in mind that if you do attempt this, you need to get back into the correct arrivals stream to pass through immigration.