DATA SPOTLIGHT: Air Tahiti Nui

16 March, 2020

This year The Blue Swan Daily will feature some of the leading airlines, airports and country markets for air travel. Here, using the extensive profile insights available to CAPA - Centre for Aviation members to deliver a data snapshot, we look at Air Tahiti Nui, which in the past couple of days has operated the world's longest commercial scheduled passenger flight, flying non-stop between Papeete and Paris.

The one-off service follows the decision by the US to restrict flights in and out of the country from Europe. Air Tahiti Nui normally operates the route via Los Angeles, and while on other days during the current travel ban stops have been scheduled in Canada and Guadeloupe, on 15-Mar-2020 the service operated non-stop, flying a distance of over 9,700 miles.

This was only possible thanks to strong tailwinds and will certainly have operated with significant payload restrictions. It may only be a one-off, but until the launch of the new Project Sunrise flights from Qantas, it will remain the world's longest scheduled flight. What's more it wasn't even an international service, but counts as a domestic flight as Tahiti is part of French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France.

ABOUT
Air Tahiti Nui is the national airline of French Polynesia and is headquartered in Papeete, Tahiti. It operates international services for the low and high-end leisure travel markets. Its main base is Faa'a International Airport, Papeete, and has a route network linking four continents.

GLOBAL RANKING (as at 16-Mar-2020)