Ok, I’ve finally been able to get the trip report together and it’s a long one so I broke it up. I have Taha’a and Bora Bora in part 1 today and Tikehau and Tahiti in part 2 tomorrow. I apologize to those who aren’t trip report fans. I’ll be back to more normal posting next week.

Flying on Air Tahiti was fantastic, and the places we stayed (thanks for the media rates, Pearl Resorts) were unreal. Let’s pick up after we landed in Papeete at 345a.

After more than half an hour of sitting in the Papeete airport snack shop in the hot, humid night, we saw people lining up at the Air Tahiti ticket counter for check in. It was 430a, and getting in line was the best thing we could do to stay awake, so we did. One agent came out and started checking people in. Then another one. And they all trickled out slowly until 5a when they were all staffed up. Right at 5a, we reached an agent (it was slow going), and we were checked in for the first of our six interisland flights in no time.

We bought a Bora Tuamotu pass for this trip which cost 56,200 French Pacific Francs per person ($640.49 on my credit card). That seemed like a lot of money at the time for a few flights on puddlejumpers, but now after seeing prices in Tahiti, that seems like a bargain.

After we checked in, we walked through the last security screening we would face until our return flight to the US and passed in and out of consciousness in the dark waiting room for half an hour until our flight boarded.

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April 11, 2009
Air Tahiti #311 Lv Papeete (PPT) 6a Arr Huahine (HUH) 640a
PPT: Runway 4, Dept a Little Late
HUH: Runway 7, Arr On Time
Aircraft: F-OIQB, ATR 42-500, Named Hiriata, Half Full
Seat: On the left next to the prop
Flight Time: ~30m

I was half asleep as I boarded the airplane and the sun started to rise. I asked the agent which side gave us the best view and she said the left, so we parked ourselves right next to the prop and awaited departure. Soon we were airborne for the 30 minute hop to Huahine.

This was my first time on an ATR and I was impressed. It was very quiet and a heck of a lot more comfortable inside than a regional jet. The flight attendant passed through with some pineapple juice and then sat back down for the short duration of the flight. We had a great view of Moorea and then descended into Huahine for a short stop.

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April 11, 2009
Air Tahiti #311 Lv Huahine (HUH) 655a Arr Raiatea (RFP) 715a
HUH: Runway 7, Dept a Little Early
RFP: Runway 7, Arr a Little Early
Aircraft: F-OIQB, ATR 42-500, Named Hiriata, Half Full
Seat: On the left next to the prop
Flight Time: ~15m

Some people got off and others got on, but we didn’t go anywhere. Fifteen minutes after we arrived, we were airborne again for the 15 minute (or less) jump to Raiatea, our destination that day. We didn’t even get above the cloud bottoms before we were descending into the airport. We landed, taxied back on the runway (no taxiways around these parts), and walked into the open-air terminal where a tractor brought our bags up on to a shelf for pick up. The whole trip was like this. Here’s a video of Raiatea as we came in to land. (Click if you can’t see the video)

Raiatea is just across a shallow lagoon from Taha’a, and we were staying at the Le Taha’a Island Resort and Spa which is situated on a motu (small islet) at the edge of the lagoon off the coast of Taha’a. A boat took us directly there in 30 minutes. It wasn’t even 8a when we arrived, but we felt like it was bedtime.

Le Taha’a claims to be on a private island, but it’s not actually the case anymore. A few locals have moved in to other parts of the motu but except for an occasional dog running through, you don’t see them. This was the most expensive of all the hotels we stayed at on this trip by far. The rack rate on the overwater bungalows can easily top $1,000 a night but we were offered a media rate that averaged out to be around a third of that price.

This was the perfect place to start our trip, because we just wanted to relax and do nothing. It’s easy to do that here. They put us in an overwater bungalow with a premium view. From our (really comfortable) bed we looked out on a small palm tree-filled sandbar with Bora Bora beyond. We had a private patio area and we spent a great deal of time out there just reading and watching the fish in the shallow water.

Sounds like paradise, right? It was, but was there anything not to love about this place? The one thing that plagued us throughout the trip was the high cost of food. We had heard stories, but we didn’t realize truly how expensive it was. At any given time, Le Taha’a had one restaurant serving meals. (There’s a fancy restaurant that was being renovated, but our meals alternated between the tree-top restaurant and the poolside one.) Appetizers of $25 and main courses of $40 or more were pretty standard. And breakfast was a $40 buffet – that was it. I’m fairly sure I forced myself to eat more than $40 worth of food on the days we had breakfast, and I became an expert at hoarding delicious rolls to sustain me through the day.

We did go on to Taha’a itself one day – they had frequent boat shuttles on the 5 minute trip – but there wasn’t much to do there. We rented a buggy and drove around the island to pearl farms and vanilla plantations, but after four hours, we had seen most of what we wanted to see. The scenery was fantastic, and I would highly recommend doing this if you go. You can also stop at the general store and pick up some snacks and drinks for relatively cheap.

After our drive, we went over to the famous Chez Louise for beer and some poisson cru (I’d describe it as Tahitian ceviche). This place is an excellent dive sitting on the water on Taha’a. The poisson cru was fantastic, and the local Hinano brew washed it down quite well.

Other than that, we just relaxed. We walked out to the coral garden one day and Kirsten went to the spa another day, which was in a very relaxing setting on a private lagoon. By the end of our five nights there, we were definitely ready to keep moving on to find a little more action. Bora Bora was next.

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April 16, 2009
Air Tahiti #262 Lv Raiatea (RFP) 930a Arr Bora Bora (BOB) 950a
RFP: Runway 7, Dept A Little Early
BOB: Runway 11, Arr A Little Early
Aircraft: F-OIQU, ATR 72-212A, Named Tiairani, Two Thirds Full
Seat: On the left near the back
Flight Time: 12m22s

The boat from Le Taha’a got us to the airport about an hour before the flight, and that was way too early. Check in took 10 seconds and without any security screening to worry about, we had plenty of time to wait. When the plane pulled up, some people jumped off and then we hopped on. This ATR 72 felt a lot like the 42 but longer. It was even quieter since you could get further away from the engines.

This was the shortest flight of the trip, and the shortest I’ve ever been on. We took off, turned past a cloud towering over Taha’a, saw Le Taha’a down below, and then began our descent. As you can imagine, there was no service on this flight. We landed 12 minutes and 22 seconds after we departed. Here’s some video of Bora Bora as we passed to the north. (Click if you can’t see the video)

The Bora Bora airport looked like a palace compared to Raiatea. It even had separate corridors for people arriving and departing – probably just to be able to handle the desks for all the different resorts on the island. We found the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort’s desk and we were whisked away on to a boat for the 15 minute ride to our hotel.

The Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort and Spa is also on a motu on the northwest side of its island, but the vibe is completely different here. There were more people, and there was a lot more action at the resort itself. That’s not better or worse than Le Taha’a, but it was a nice change of pace.

Overwater bungalows here run more than $700 a night, but we paid far less than that. We spent three nights here, and we really enjoyed the place.

The restaurants here had slightly more to offer, and there was a bar with a pool table and a nightly happy hour. The spa here is large and impressive, and Kirsten again decided to pay it a visit. One thing we really liked was that they had a DVD library in the boutique from which you could borrow to watch movies in your room. It was a nice change from our daily check of CNN (the only channel in English we had) to make sure the world hadn’t melted down (any further, I mean).

One thing that really surprised me here is that they have a large number of “garden” cottages around the grounds. I loved the overwater bungalows, but the garden setting was truly beautiful and it could save you some money. Still, nothing can beat the bungalows for uniqueness. Ours was near the coral nursery they had planted to start attracting more fish to the area. It was just fantastic.

What else did we do? Well we took a waverunner tour of the island. That was a lot of fun, and we even got close to some dolphins in the lagoon. We went by the now-closed Hotel Bora Bora (the first overwater bungalows on the island) and the Club Med that’s also closed. On the northeast side, we went by some of the newer hotels, including the absurdly luxurious St Regis and Four Seasons. Those bungalows look like houses (with pools) over the water. Incredible.

We also went on to Bora Bora on one of the frequent shuttles in order to have dinner at the incredibly tasty Villa Mahana. This place is very tiny with only six tables inside, and the French chef personally cooks every meal. I had some of the best foie gras I’ve ever had there, and the fish was exquisite.

Any complaints (besides the food prices)? I do have to say that the bed was very uncomfortable. It must have been an old mattress and it sagged in the middle making for a rough night’s sleep. The bungalows were also not completely sealed from the outside so that left them open to noise. And each night, the wind carried techno beats from the main island right into our room. That’s certainly not the hotel’s fault, but it made for some long nights.

But those were relatively minor issues. We had a great time with the faster pace at this hotel. It appears that others like this place as well because there were a good number of people milling around. That’s more than I can say about some of the other hotels.

Next, we were off to Tikehau, the atoll up in the Tuamotu chain and easily our favorite spot on the whole trip by far. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for that one.

[See more of our pictures on Flickr]
[See more of our videos on YouTube]

I know, I know. I’m not on vacation anymore, but when industry veteran Hubert Horan sent me this rebuttal to Evan Sparks’s piece, “Why International Alliances Are Good for You,” I just had to post it. What do you think?
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I was in charge of international network planning and scheduling at NWA in the early/mid 90s, and developed the first (NWA-KLM) alliance network in 1993. Within 18 months we expanded hub-to-hub flying from 2 to 9 daily flights, establishing the network model subsequently copied by Delta-Swissair (in 95) and United-Lufthansa (in 97). I later spent four years at Swissair/Sabena, so I have worked these alliances from both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve not only built up alliances that actually worked from a customer/financial standpoint, but I’ve helped shut down alliances (America West-Continental, the European Qualiflyer alliance) that didn’t. In recent years I’ve published a variety of articles on alliances, the dynamics of international competition, the EU-US treaty negotiations, and related topics. Thus when I say that the arguments in the 13 April post “International Alliances Are Good For You” demonstrate a profound ignorance of international airline competition and the economics of airline alliances, there is a substantial body of analysis and experience behind my claims.

The current applications for alliance antitrust immunity will completely end meaningful competition on the North Atlantic. 23 airlines that used to compete independently have applied to the US and EU governments to consolidate into three Collusive Alliances. There are active press reports that two others may join in the near future (see list below). The three Collusive Alliances will control 97% of all North Atlantic traffic. The three groups would function as a North Atlantic Cartel with the Lufthansa and Air France groups dominating Continental European traffic (75-80% of the total North Atlantic) while the British Airways-led group would dominate the US-UK market (the other 20-25%). None of the members of this cozy Cartel would have any incentive to compete aggressively with the others.

The central issue here is whether you think this radical North Atlantic consolidation is “Good For You”, as the author of the 13 April post believes, or would cause lasting damage to consumers and industry efficiency. A few factual points are critical to understanding the economic issues.

1. These Collusive Alliances, which explicitly eliminate competition, function totally differently from the longstanding “Branded Alliances” (Star, Skyteam, Oneworld) which are enhanced frequent flyer programs, and are not anti-competitive. United can collude on prices and schedules with Lufthansa and other European “Star” members, but faces aggressive competition from ANA, Thai, Singapore, and other “Star” members. Reciprocal frequent flyer “alliances” date to the early 80s, long before the Collusive Alliances began. Oneworld has functioned fine for ten years without any antitrust immunity arrangements; if its members were not granted immunity to collude on North Atlantic pricing, Oneworld would continue to function in its present form.




2. The North Atlantic, like other Intercontinental markets, has huge barriers to competitive entry. It is absolutely impossible to compete on the North Atlantic without a large scale hub operation on at least one side of the ocean. This is a pure “network airline” market; no LCC or niche competitor has ever achieved more than a miniscule share of the North Atlantic. Many of the most important airports (JFK, EWR, LHR, CDG, FRA, ORD) are highly slot constrained. Even though there has been active entry and dynamic growth in most of global aviation since deregulation, there has been almost no net entry into the Intercontinental sector in the last 25 years. There is no plausible evidence to support the claim that any anti-competitive behavior by the Alliance Cartel would be quickly disciplined by new competitors entering the market.




3. The three original Collusive Alliances (NWA-KLM, Delta-Swissair, Lufthansa-United) benefited consumers in the early mid-90s by providing improved schedules and lower prices to one previously underserved piece of the market, the so-called “double connect” markets. These St. Louis-Berlin or Jacksonville-Munich type city-pairs, where no one offered “online” service, actually accounted for about 25% of the North Atlantic in 1990. You could fly interline, but fares were high. The original alliances provided good schedules in these markets and the full range of discounts found elsewhere. But by 1997, this market gap had been fully closed. After 1997, the Collusive Alliances didn’t offer consumers any new services or prices that hadn’t been available before.




4. As late as 2003, the North Atlantic had healthy competition and was strongly profitable. The three largest competitors served about 55% of the market; no one had anything close to the “market power” that would permit the type of oligopoly behavior that could harm consumers. The three Collusive Alliances (focused on connect markets) combined had about 45% of total traffic; they competed with each other and with the non-alliance carriers that focused on larger nonstop markets (BA, Virgin Atlantic, AA, US Airways, Continental).




5. Prices paid by North Atlantic consumers have been climbing rapidly (chart below). In the 1990s, transatlantic average fare trends closely tracked US domestic trends. But this changed after 2000; as North Atlantic concentration levels (top 3 share) rose from 47% to 67% in 2007, average North Atlantic fares rose 40% more than US domestic fares. The threat of consumer price gouging will surely increase further as concentration grows from 67% to 97%.









6. Each of the 23 (soon to be 26) previously independent airlines went to the US and EU governments with a petition to either merge, or for antitrust immunity to actively collude on prices, schedules, service and everything else (which is exactly the same as a merger). The big Legacy carriers have invested millions in lobbying and public relation efforts advocating “industry consolidation”. The move to radical consolidation had nothing to do with consumers, efficiency, or “market forces”. The shift from a market where the top 3 competitors had a 55% share, to a world where they have a 97% share, resulted from government officials agreeing with the requests from these airlines to eliminate competition.

Why are the current antitrust immunity applications and the larger trend towards radical North Atlantic consolidation Bad for Consumers and Industry Efficiency?

• Because none of the consolidation since 2003 generated any new consumer benefits or offsetting productivity gains that could have possibly justified the reduced competition.




• Because extreme concentration in markets with high entry barriers always creates huge risks, and there is zero probability of new competition that would ever threaten the hegemony of the 3-alliance Cartel–Southwest or Easyjet will never invest the tens of billions that would be needed to mount a serious competitive challenge.




• Because once it is in place, it will be much more profitable for the 3-alliance Cartel to steadily raise prices while cutting capacity and service—classic oligopoly behavior—undermining the growth that airports and local economies depend on, and undermining the pressure for innovation that is critical to long-run industry efficiency




• Because airlines will use the totally artificial profits from the protected North Atlantic Cartel to distort competition in the US domestic market—for example Delta can use these artificial profits to subsidize competition against more efficient shorthaul carriers such as Airtran and Southwest.




• Because having a radical shift towards concentration totally driven by government action—explicitly favoring the interests of the big Legacy airlines over the interests of consumers, communities and non-Legacy airlines—makes a travesty of the basic principles of deregulated competition and Open Skies.

How can the author of the April 13th post, and the Legacy Airline PR people claim that merging 26 independent North Atlantic airlines into a 3-alliance Cartel is Good for Consumers?

• Try to confuse people by conflating the frequent flyer benefits of Branded Alliances with the anti-competitive impacts of mergers and Collusive Alliances




• Use false and deliberately misleading evidence, i.e., claim that an academic analysis demonstrating that consumers benefited when the original alliances were first introduced in the mid 90s under vibrant competitive conditions proves that consumers will achieve new incremental benefits if these alliances are merged together and competition is totally eliminated in 2009




• Ignore historical evidence (recent pricing data), or simply fabricate false claims, i.e., that reduced competition is a necessary response to the recession, ignoring the fact that all of these mergers and alliances were planned years ago when the market was strongly profitable, and ignoring the fact that no one is demanding radical consolidation of the much more competitive domestic market




• Consider every transaction in isolation, without ever considering competitive responses, or ever examining the overall evidence of accelerating North Atlantic consolidation. The reviews of the Air France-KLM and Delta-NWA applications ignored the inevitable follow-on applications from Continental, BA-AA and others




• Make sure there is no regulatory scrutiny by objective outsiders of any merger/antitrust immunity claims; the only public evidence of the DOJ review of the Delta-Northwest merger is a one page press release touting the lower prices and expanded service that the reduced competition would allegedly create

As witnessed with the financial industry, the fight for airline consolidation has been led by people who claim to be true believers in “free markets” but are actually fighting to get governments to intervene in favor of badly managed (but politically powerful) big companies. The “free market” consolidation argument is really a demand to gut remaining antitrust and regulatory protections for market competition so that those big companies can merge into “too big to fail” global airlines. The “free market” case isn’t based on any data or analysis that can be objectively verified, and insists that anyone who disagrees must be a self-serving politician, if not an evil socialist. People who care about the future of commercial aviation shouldn’t ever tolerate this kind of nonsense.

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Hubert Horan is a Phoenix-based aviation consultant with 25 years of industry experience. His website is horanaviation.com

Note 1—the 23 previously independent competitors that have merged, or have formally applied to merge into the three Collusive Alliance groups: United, Continental, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Austrian, Swiss, SAS, TAP, Turkish, LOT, bmi, Brussels into the Lufthansa-led group; Delta, NWA, Air France, KLM, Alitalia, Czech into the Air France-led group and BA, AA-TWA, Iberia, Finnair into the British Airways-led group; Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic, and US Airways are also widely reported to be pursuing membership but have not yet formally applied for antitrust immunity. The largest carriers outside the Collusive Alliances would be Aeroflot (0.5% of transatlantic capacity in 2007) Aerosvit and flyglobespan (0.2% of capacity each).

In general, baggage fees make people cringe. I don’t think it’s that it’s because charging for a checked bag is bad in theory, but rather it’s just that everybody was used to getting a couple bags included in the price of the ticket. The transition has been rough on customers, but one is at least trying to make the transition easier. Alaska seems to be trying to prove that there are, in fact, “good” bag fees by being the first to offer a guarantee in return.

Up until now, it’s been a pretty standard deal on most airlines. What you used to get for free, you now have to pay for, though airlines have been tweaking this to some extent. I believe US Airways may be the first legacy carrier to try price differentiation. If you pay online in advance to check your first bag, it’ll cost you that now-standard $15. If you pay at the airport, it will now cost you $20.

But the airlines have been missing something here, and that’s that the relationship changes when you have to pay for something like this. Now that you’re paying an amount specifically tied to the delivery of that bag, do airlines have additional responsibility to get to you in a timely manner? So far, the answer has been no. You aren’t treated any differently than you were when checking your bag was free. But Alaska is challenging that model.

Currently, Alaska still allows you to check one bag for free. But for tickets purchased beginning on May 1 for travel beginning July 7, it will now cost $15 to check that bag. Seems standard, right? But they’ve actually included a guarantee. And that’s what makes this a “good” bag fee, sort of.

If your bag doesn’t make it to the carousel within 25 minutes, you will now be entitled to either 2,500 miles or a $25 certificate to be used on a future flight. Does this cost them much? Nah. But it makes the customer feel like they’re actually getting something in return for paying the fee.

Of course, the fine print has exceptions. This only goes through December 15, though if it stays low cost I’d bet it will stick around. The more troubling exception is this:

Alaska and Horizon reserve the right to suspend the BSG in cases of airport baggage system malfunctions, severe weather events, or other conditions out of the airlines’ control that limit or prohibit timely baggage delivery.

I know that force majeure clauses are pretty standard, but come on – it’s not like they’re offering an embarrassment of riches here. We’ll see how often they invoke this clause.

But at least they’re trying to do something to address the changing relationship here, so for that, I give them credit.

Hope you all enjoyed the guest posts, but now it’s time for me to get back to work. We had a fantastic time in French Polynesia, and it’s going to take me a little time to get back into the swing of things. I thought I’d ease myself back in with a trip report, starting with Air France from LA to Papeete, Tahiti. Later this week, I’ll have the more fun stuff – Air Tahiti around the islands along with some of the most relaxing hotels on earth.

Last October, I asked you all whether we should fly Air France or Air Tahiti Nui down. Air France won out, and that’s what we did thanks to a slightly lower business class fare ($2825.41 per person) and a better schedule. This was the first time I’ve ever paid for a business class ticket outright, so my expectations may have been higher than normal, but it just wasn’t up to snuff.

Our flight out was at 1030p, so we decided to get there at 830p so we’d have a little time in the lounge beforehand. There was no line to check in at that time, but Terminal 2 at LAX still doesn’t have inline baggage screening. So we had to lug our bags over to the machine and drop them off. Though the TSA said we could leave, there was a huge pile of bags and we didn’t trust them. We waited.

Flight crews kept dropping their bags off and then more people on other flights came as well and had to wait in a long line to even drop their bags off. It took us 20 minutes before we saw our bag go through the machine, and only then did we make our way through a short but slow security line on our way to the lounge.

The lounge is currently the Northwest lounge, but Northwest should be heading for greener pastures (Delta’s terminal) in June. I assume Air France/KLM will become the primary tenant, and I hope they’ll do some serious work on the place. One thing they can’t fix is that it’s too small. Our one flight with a couple stragglers from other Northwest flights basically filled the place up.

What they can fix is the awful state of the lounge. The rugs are threadbare, the seating and tables are old and scratched up, and the lighting is bad. We did have some wine to pass the time, but the enjoyment was dampened when I had to sit on a table to drink it.

As we finished our drinks, they called our flight for boarding, so we headed down and used the premium cabin boarding line. The agent apparently decided we weren’t premium enough and tried to push us out of the way to allow first class passengers ahead of us. Ok.

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April 10, 2009
Air France #674 Lv Los Angeles (LAX) 1030p Arr Papeete (PPT) 350a
LAX: Gate 27, Runway 24L, Dept On Time
PPT: Gate ??, Runway 22, Arr 9m Early
Aircraft: F-GSPG, Boeing 777-228ER, Standard White Colors, Mostly Full
Seat: 5L
Flight Time: 7h54m


Once onboard, we found our seats on the right side of the plane and settled in for the flight. (The picture at right is of the seat on the return flight, but you get the idea.) We weren’t really greeted by anyone until about 20 minutes into boarding when flight attendants came around with champagne and juice for anyone who was interested. Soon enough it was time to push back and take off. After we left the California coast, we wouldn’t see land again until we reached Tahiti.

Once in the air, my wife, Kirsten, and I had another drink, so we had a bit of a nice buzz going as we played with the entertainment system. It wasn’t particularly easy to navigate. Yes, it had movies, music, etc, but getting around them was somewhat clunky. And it’s not organized very well. For example, something in “latest” movies that was a comedy couldn’t also be found under “comedy,” so it required some hunting and pecking, even though the selection was fairly limited.

As I got into my movie (The Wrestler – great flick), dinner was served. I wasn’t very hungry, but since it was dinner time in Tahiti, I decided to at least have something. The foie gras appetizer was ok, and the beef was actually pretty good. Kirsten, however, had that night’s special which was lamb, and I thought that was really good. Still, since I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the food. Kirsten, on the other hand, paid close attention and didn’t think it was very good.

After the meal, I tried to sleep, but that wasn’t going to happen. This was my first time in an angled lie-flat seat and I just couldn’t sleep in it. I kept sliding down in my pants, and the amount of weight that ended up being put on my feet into the footrest prevented me from getting comfortable. It just didn’t feel flat to me. I put the bed back into a cradle-style position and had slightly more success, sleeping on and off for a couple hours.

About an hour and a half out, they woke us all up for breakfast. Now, I understand airlines feel the need to bracket you on both ends with food, but breakfast at midnight Tahitian time (same as Hawai’i time – 3 hours behind LA) made very little sense. Still I was actually feeling hungry at this point, so I had some – it was just a croissant with some fruit.

Around 3a, we started our descent into the black night. This was probably the worst possible flight for sightseeing on the ground and the descent was no different. It was only about 2 minutes before landing that I saw my first light on land, and we touched down at 345a into an airport that was just waking up.

After getting our bags, we entered into the worst part of the trip – the wait for our next flight. We had about 2 hours in a hot, humid, still airport before our 6a trip out to another island and we had nothing to do but wait. I’ll have more on the interisland flights in a later report, but let’s skip ahead to the return on Air France two weeks later.

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We were told to get to the airport around 2 hours before departure, but we thought about not taking that warning too seriously. I’m really glad we did, because it was a complete mess over there.

It took 20 minutes to return the car we had rented for a day, and then it was another 30 minutes in the premium check-in line before we reached an agent to check Kirsten’s bag. (As usual, I only carried on, even for a two week trip.) The economy line was much worse (at left) and there were a lot of angry people around as the line barely moved.

Once checked in, we went to the lounge which is shared by all carriers at the airport. This one was much nicer than the one in LA with big comfy chairs and plenty of room. (It was recently expanded.) I took this shot out the window with Moorea in the background. Yes, it was hard to leave this place.

Soon they called boarding, so we went downstairs to find the absurdly numbered gate 61. There are basically five or six doors in a holdroom and for some reason they decided they needed a gate 61. It’s not fooling anyone into thinking this is a big airport.

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April 25, 2009
Air France #673 Lv Papeete (PPT) 730a Arr Los Angeles (LAX) 645p
PPT: Gate 61, Runway 4, Dept 24m Late
LAX: Gate 26, Runway 24R, Arr 1m Early
Aircraft: F-GSPK, Boeing 777-228ER, Standard White Colors, Mostly Full
Seat: 4A
Flight Time: 7h35m


I took the window seat and immediately found that the tray wouldn’t close properly into the armrest. I told the flight attendant so that he would write it up for when we arrived, but a mechanic came onboard to look while we were there. Though Air Tahiti Nui will be handling the maintenance for Air France’s 777s in Papeete, they still haven’t gotten the official sign-off on it, so Air France has an LAX-based tech down there for awhile.

So he came on and knew the problem right away. He dug in and pulled out a dirty fork, knife, and spoon and said it happens all the time. Nasty. It still wouldn’t close, however, but at least it wasn’t sticking out as far. I felt bad thinking I was holding up the plane to fix the tray, but they assured me that wasn’t the case. They were still waiting for nine passengers to show up – they were stuck in that horrible line at the ticket counter. They said this was pretty normal.

We finally got in the air and headed north. It was a nice morning, but apparently Air France thought it was time to serve lunch. So we had a full lunch service, and I had the lamb this time which was pretty good. I had a little morning scotch (why not?) and settled in for a day of watching movies.

Kirsten also wanted to watch movies, but her headphones weren’t working right (the noise-canceling feature was cutting in and out). The design Air France uses for their seat has the headphones built in to it so you can’t swap them out. Instead, they brought a coach headset forward to plug into an extra jack that’s in each seat. At least they were very apologetic, but it was an inferior headset.

After the meal, the flight attendants basically disappeared into the galley and didn’t check on us much at all for the bulk of the flight. To be fair, about halfway through, we plowed into some nasty turbulence that didn’t let up for probably about an hour. (Thank you, weather.com for your mapping goodness.)

This was some pretty rough stuff that would probably be categorized as moderate turbulence, if not a little worse for brief periods. So for quite awhile, the crew couldn’t get up. But even when that was done, I still had to get up to ask for a drink refill. (After turbulence like that, I needed another drink. I am somewhat of an anxious flier, believe it or not.)

We did see them again when they served a light meal a couple hours out of LA. And when they finished, they even tried to take my half-full glass of scotch for some unknown reason. I wasn’t having any of that.

Toward the end, one of the flight attendants did come around and personally asked how everyone was doing – just some small talk that was a nice gesture. They also handed out a survey to a select few which I filled out just as we were crossing the coast. We came in from the south and then landed on the north runways.

It was easy to get through immigration but the customs lines were incredibly long and there were a lot of tired and angry faces patiently waiting to get out of there after long flights. About 20 minutes later, we were on our way home.

I’ll have the rest of the trip ready for you soon.

Cranky is on vacation, but I did pre-schedule some posts on BNET. Here are the ones from last week. We get back in town tonight, so I’ll be back live on the blog on Monday.
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Airline Executives Discuss Foreign Ownership, Unbundling, Partnerships, and Consolidation
I promise, this is it . . . the last half of my last post on the Phoenix Aviation Symposium.

Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan In the Spotlight
I’ve talked about it before, but the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan is getting closer to reality. But when will we really know if it’s a success?

Southwest’s Load Planning System Improves Baggage Processes
Things happening under the wing are easy to overlook by the traveling public, but sometimes they can bring big benefits.