New planes for Air France to Tahiti

[canadagal]

Tourism : 02/11/2006 @ 15:28

Air France opens new Tahiti chapter Friday with new planes, more flights, but fewer seats

 

(Tahitipresse) - Air France opens a new chapter in its Tahiti service Friday with new aircraft, more weekly flights, but fewer overall seats, more business class seats, but fewer economy seats, and no more code sharing with Air Tahiti Nui.

 

The French national carrier is replacing its Boeing 747 aircraft with an Airbus A340 on the Los Angeles-Papeete-Los Angeles route. The first Air France Airbus will arrive at the Tahiti-Faa'a International Airport. Air France is also replacing its 747 Paris-Los Angeles-Paris flights with Boeing 777-300 aircraft.

 

There will be four weekly flights instead of the previous three, but the overall seating capacity will be less as Air France aims to increase each flight's passenger load to make each flight more profitable. At the moment, Air France estimates it has been flying with 30%-35% of its seats empty, thus operating the route at a deficit, according to Jean-Daniel Allouch, the airline's regional director in Tahiti.

 

"The route is still showing a deficit today," Allouch said. "It's very difficult to find the right balance between airfares to be paid by customers and the profitability of the route. This is why it was necessary for us to adapt if we didn't want to increase our airfares."

 

Allouch said he was hopeful Air France could soon reduce costs and possibly increase revenue.

 

Air France's code sharing agreement with Air Tahiti Nui ended on Oct. 31.

 

Each Air France Airbus A340 can carry up to 272 passengers - 36 in business, 236 in economy. That compares with the previous 433-seat 747, or a net loss of 161 passengers per flight. But that shortfall is partially offset by four roundtrip Airbus flights a week from Los Angeles with an overall capacity of 1,088 passengers. That new capacity is 211 passengers less than the previous 1,299 overall capacity for three 747s.

 

But while each Airbus flight will offer 20% more business class seats, it will also offer 16% less economy seats.

 

This is potentially the first of two passenger capacity cuts on the Los Angeles-Papeete route. This is the most important route for Tahiti's tourism industry, since North America is its biggest tourist market.

 

The second airline capacity cutback is scheduled for April when Air New Zealand and Air Tahiti Nui began a code share arrangement, which, at the present time, will mean three fewer Air New Zealand flights per week from L.A. to Papeete.

 

Meanwhile, on the eve of Air France's new schedule with its Airbus service, the airline announced that passengers on Paris-Papeete-Paris flights would not need to recover their luggage while transiting in Los Angeles despite their change in aircraft for three of the four weekly flights.

 

The new schedule calls for a Boeing 777 to leave Paris at 4:30 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which passengers changing over to the Airbus plane in Los Angeles, arriving in Tahiti at 4:30 am. The A340 will turn around, leaving Papeete at 8:20 am every Friday, Saturday and Sunday for Los Angeles, where passengers will transfer to the 777 aircraft, arriving in Paris at 5:20 pm.

 

Every Thursday, an A340 will leave Paris at 4:30 pm and make the entire trip to Papeete via Los Angeles with no change in aircraft in L.A. The flight will arrive in Tahiti at 4:30 am. Every Monday, the A340 will leave Papeete at 9:10 am and make the entire trip to Paris via Los Angeles with no change in aircraft in L.A. The flight will arrive in the French capital at 5:20 pm.

[lborne]

It is about time. I know this is a bit OT, but my worst flight ever was when I flew AF from LAX to Tahiti back in 1994 on an old and tired 747. The seats were horrible with no padding left and worn fabric so bad there were holes all over. The flight had just arrived from Paris with hundreds of French people who LOVE to smoke. It was like getting into a big ashtray. Then, on the flight to Tahiti, there were not enough smoking seats, so people were standing in the aisles smoking.

[egret]

Maybe Air France might someday think about not being so arrogant and actually treat passengers like customers to value, instead of animals. I would rather fly in a packed to capacity airplane on any other airline than an empty Air France plane.