Flight review: Air Tahiti Nui – Auckland to Tahiti

By Anne Majumdar

Carrier: Air Tahiti Nui

When: October 27 2015, arriving in Tahiti October 26 2015

Aircraft: Airbus Industrie, A343 Jet, Flight TN102

Class: Economy

Configuration: 2 4 2

Seat: 32L. I requested a window seat and managed to nab one at the back of the plane, with no one next to me.

How long: Five hours

Verdict: 8/10

Frequency: There aren’t any direct flights to Tahiti from Australia, so we nipped into Auckland for a stopover. I had originally flown from Sydney to Auckland on Qantas.

Baggage:

Qantas was the carrier for the first leg of the flight to Auckland, meaning economy passengers were allowed up to 20kg in checked baggage. As I had gotten to the airport rather early, there weren’t many others checking in for the same flight, so it was a nice and speedy process.

My bag was checked through all the way to Tahiti, so I didn’t have to worry about it when we landed in Auckland. I just picked it up in Tahiti and went on my way.

The bags also came out relatively quickly at the other end in Papeete, so not much waiting around at all.

Checking in:

As I can be a bit of a cautious, over-thinking, over-prepared flyer, I got to the desks for my 8.30am flight nearly at the crack of dawn at 6am. So the airport was relatively quiet and I only had to wait about four minutes to check in. Qantas is also a major carrier in Australia, so has plenty of check-in desks around.

As I was checked through all the way to Tahiti, I was lucky in that I didn’t have to re-check-in once in Auckland, something our tour extraordinaire in charge Rob Thompson had been a bit worried about. He was relieved when I told him I didn’t have to re-check back in. Perhaps that has been an issue in the past?

Onboard the plane:

A flower behind the ear seems to be standard dress code. Most passengers happily adhere to it when the airhostess decked out in tropical blues and greens hands out closed frangipanis to those already seated.

It’s part and parcel with Air Tahiti Nui’s branding and identity, and even the blankets, which are rather thick and generously cover your body, are azure one side, aquamarine the other.

We walked through First Class to get to economy class, so got to see how the other half lived. And I did look nice, but the fact that the flight wasn’t completely full made economy rather okay as well.

Smell wise on the plane, most of it was lovely and tropical. However, the woman behind me kept putting her feet up on the armrests of the seat next to me, which was unoccupied, and boy, did they stink! A constant waft of bitter, stale, sweaty foot kept floating past my nose. I found another reason for the flower apart from looking tropical.

Staff:

Smiles all round, and lovely and helpful, even in my terrible attempt to speak a little French.

Food:

We’re served dinner on the plane, and while not having a choice which meal we get, the curry is hot and mixed with rice and your standard veggies. It’s not all together horrible, as some airline food can have the reputation of being, however the absence of chocolate is one issue I feel needs to be seriously addressed. We did also get a pasta salad with some ham and a meringue with cream and some sort of raspberry coulee on top. Rather pleasant.

One of the air hosts comes round with a large selection of extra bread rolls to mop up the sauce from the curry or to combine with your cheese, which was a bonus.

Entertainment:

The TV on the back of the seat seems fairly up-market, easily responsive to a finger sliding across the screen when deciding what to watch. Aside from offering movies and TV shows, extra info on Tahiti and the islands available, as well as music, magazines, games and books.

While not having as wide a selection as I’ve seen on other carriers, there was a diverse range in new release, oldies and ones in French.

There were also USB sockets to plug your phones, ipods, other USB-enabling devices into which, although I didn’t use it, was nice to know it was there.

One thing I would note, is that the headphones are the small bud like ones which fit snugly in your ear, not the usual larger ones that get trapped across the top of your head. However, as they were small, I didn’t discover them in the little comfort pack until halfway through the flight.

Comfort:

I didn’t have anyone next to me which really is the epitome of comfort on a flight in my opinion. Not everyone was as lucky, however the seats seemed rather large although they did curve in a slightly odd shape around your back, so I felt I had to be slightly hunched the whole time.

The seats did have the extra wings on the sides you can move to rest your head, and as mentioned before, the blanket was soft and large enough to fit your whole body under, not having to curl into the foetal position to enable it to cover your entirety.

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