Droneklax
Apr 4, 02, 1:35 am
LAX-PPT/ Air New Zealand
We decided it was a better idea to take a cab to LAX rather than drive and Wally park. After 40 minutes of busy Friday evening LA traffic, our cab driver dropped us off in front of terminal 2, near the end of the frighteningly long line of passengers trying to make it into Terminal 1, presumably headed for cattle transport Southwest. I don’t understand how they still haven’t fixed that problem (I mean the long line, not Southwest- although that could use some fixing too).
We looked for the Star Gold check-in, which we found on the east end of the Terminal, and were given our Steerage boarding passes immediately. We were asked if we had any sharp tools with us. A pair of scissors immediately found its way behind the NZ counter. Don’t ask me, he hasn’t traveled since 9/11 and I wasn’t about to say anything at the onset of a week in French Polynesia http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
We ran to make it to the X-Ray machine before a group of screaming soccer girls headed for the Virgin flight. The bored-to-her-tits rent-a-screener looked at our boarding passes and said “ Go this way” indicating the general public line, to which I answered flatly “No, I’ll go this way”, pointing to the empty Star Gold X-Ray line. She took the boarding passes again, saw the “* Gold” notation and fired back “Well, you didn’t tell me anything”. Silly me, I though she was looking at the boarding passes with the actual intent of reading them.
We took the elevator to the NZ lounge (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/nz.jpg) populated by a few lesbian couples. Soon enough, we found out that the MS Paul Gauguin was leaving Papeete with a full cargo of lesbians the following day.
I had been forced to leave all my electronic gizmos at home. That meant no cell phone, no laptop. No device with anything looking even remotely like a LCD screen was going to make it to Bora-Bora. Already in withdrawal, I checked the email for the last time on the lounge computer, got the latest conversion rate for the Comptoirs du Pacifique Francs ($1=135 CFP) while sipping a glass of Chandon. At 6:45 pm there we were with our lesbian friends on our way to gate 21 where a 767-300 was awaiting us.
Call me crazy, but I like 2+ engines when traveling over the Pacific. "Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim=ETOPS", I told Scott before boarding, and I don’t think he appreciated the humor. Boarding started and they called Business class passengers. We asked if they also meant * Gold and they said yes so here we went. It would be nice not to have to remind them of one of the benefits of Star Alliance.
Our seats were in steerage, but in row 19, one of the two exit rows above the wing. Ample legroom was available, but I almost had a coronary when I tried to recline the seat. THE **** THING WOULD NOT RECLINE. The prospect of 8 hours with a seat at 90° was not going down very well. I ran to the purser and told him that I had specifically asked if those seats reclined, and I was told that they did, and guess what they don’t and what are you going to do about it? A flight attendant overheard the conversation and tells me that she will unlock the seats after take off. They are locked for take off and landings. All right then, we’re OK to go.
After a short taxi, we take off from runway 24L and head WSW (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/hawaai.jpg) toward Tahiti. And I wait for the flight attendant who would not show up. I finally get the attention of another, and he tells me that on this specific aircraft, the seats actually do not recline, the previous FA was mistaken. Aggravating.
After he leaves, I decided to diddle around with knobs and stuff on the left side of the seat. I find a little lever that begs to be pulled, pushed, moved, massaged, whatever. I pull and BINGO all of a sudden our seats can recline!! To top it off, as the seat back reclines, the seat cushion actually moves forward, which makes for a very comfortable experience for a steerage seat. Go NZ!
The same FA comes back with the drink cart and says cheerfully “ And that will be to strong martinis for the two glamorous gentlemen!”. We laughed, agreed to the suggestion, asked him how he spotted us and he replied “Takes one to know one”. A few minutes later, he came back with two amenity kits from up front, saying “ Since we could not accommodate you in Business class, you might find these useful, but please do not open them before Papeete”. We were quite impressed with the kindness.
Dinner was forgettable fare, not bad but I wouldn’t write home about it. Announcements were made in English and heavily accented French which I thought was a nice touch.
Uneventful flight, I fell asleep dreaming of boungainvilleas, occasionally awakened by the 18 year old genius behind me who found nothing better to do than to press her bony knees against the back of my seat. I could have slapped her silly. I’d check the flight info screen periodically and found that we were flying quite close to Hawaii, probably to satisfy ETOPS rules. We ended up heading straight south (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/flinfo.jpg) to Papeete, leaving Bora-Bora about 300 km to the West (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/flinfo2.jpg) before landing toward to the West on Faaa’s only runway at about 2:00 am.
The 767 parked itself in front (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/faaa.jpg) of the terminal. There are no gates at Faaa, so we walked on the tarmac in the warm tropical breeze to enter the terminal. I love that. Tahitian musicians and singers meet every arrival, no matter how late. I went though the French passports lanes, Scott through “Others”. I asked for my passport to be stamped, which the “Policier des frontičres” wasn’t going to do, and I was out of there is a minute. It took Scott 30 minutes to join me.
<Two days in Tahiti, I’ll spare you the details. Except this one. Le Meridien (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/meridien.jpg), our hotel in Papeete, was filled with lesbians. You guessed it, Olivia Cruises had made a landing there as well. And here I was on FT a week earlier wondering how GLBT travelers would do in Tahiti http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif We actually witnessed the departure of the Paul Gauguin (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/gauguin.jpg) from the dock in Papeete the next day, and met the Gauguin again a few days later in Bora-Bora. Detail: Next to the Gauguin in Papeete were two huge Renaissance Cruise ships. They’ve been parked there since Renaissance went under after 9/11, and the local islands are feeling the pinch, particularly Raiatea, I understand>
PPT-BOB/Air Tahiti
We left for Bora-Bora on Air Tahiti (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/vt1.jpg) two days later, with a scheduled departure at 09:15 am. We arrived at the airport an hour earlier, two sleepy Tahitians scanned our luggage through the X-Ray machine before checking in. I am very glad that there does not appear to be a war against terror in French Polynesia. Our flight was on an ATR 72 (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/atr.jpg) and was almost empty. The Air Tahiti FA and ground crew wear this stunning uniform and a “tiare” flower above their ear and are frankly some of the most good-looking I have seen. Their friendliness was impressive. We took off on a dime, climbed to 2000 feet (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/tahiti.jpg) (at the most) and landed ten minutes later on Moorea (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/moorea.jpg) for a fifteen minutes stop before taking off for our final destination (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/bob1.jpg) that we reached after 45 minutes. FAs call these flights the milk run, I was told.
We landed on the runway build by G.I. during WW II. Apparently, 6,00 G.I.s were stationed in Bora-Bora in 1942. Not a bad spot to be stuck in. Particularly since Bora-Bora is seeing more Japanese visitors today that they ever welcomed between 42 and 45 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
< a week in Bora-Bora, I’ll also spare you the details only to say that it was just unreal>
BOB-PPT/ Air Tahiti
We took our boat on our motu for the Bora-Bora airport (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/bob2.jpg), which is built on a reef, around 4pm for a departure at 5pm. After a 20 minute ride through the stunningly turquoise waters of the lagoon (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/lagoon.jpg) (I really did not want to leave), we checked in for Air Tahiti flight 466 (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/atr2.jpg). This time it was a non-stop flight that landed in Faaa at 6:00 pm. Juice was served. Our connection to NZ 16 was not until a very uncivilized 2:30 am, so we placed our luggage in the lockers and took a “Le Truck” to downtown Papeete where we had “poisson cru au coco” and a Nutella-coco crępe at the local roulottes while we watched the Paul Gauguin leave again for its weekly run, lesbianless this time.
Bored with the scene of drunk French sailors and their goo-goo eyed Tahitian girlfriends, we headed back to Faaa on “le truck” and checked in at midnight in the Star Gold line. The Faaa facility is not air conditioned, so the cold NZ lounge was a welcome relief from the oppressive heat. It was quite crowded since there was a Hawaaian departure at 1 am. I watched French news on the giant TV screen, the first news I’d had in a long time. All these people had died (the Queen mother, Billy Wilder, the Middle East in shambles again) all of it was very depressing and I was glad I had been away from it all for a week.
PPT-LAX/ Air New Zealand
We boarded at 2:00 am, in a heat and boredom-induced coma. We had seats 10A and B, which are IMHO the best seats on the aircraft. No one in front since we are just behind the crew rest area, which on this aircraft is a separate compartment with solid walls. A generous cut-off in the wall gives more legroom than anyone would need. We were quite happy with the seats. The stairs were pulled back at 2:30 am, the aircraft pushed back and we started rolling onto the runway. We then made a complete U-turn and found ourselves where we started, in front of the terminal. The captain, a man with a strange speech impediment, told us that there was a problem, the nature of which he never trusted us enough to share, and that “Engineering” would look into it. Said “looking into it” lasted three hours, during which they served food and showed Zoolander.
We took off in full daylight at 6:00 am and landed at LAX a full three hours late.
In summary, Air New Zealand was good to us, I’d recommend them to anyone. Please by all means stay away from Bora-Bora, it’s a horrible horrible island that really can take no additional visitor http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif I had a horrible (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/horrible.jpg), horrible time. Please stay away. I mean it. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
[This message has been edited by Droneklax (edited 04-04-2002).]
We decided it was a better idea to take a cab to LAX rather than drive and Wally park. After 40 minutes of busy Friday evening LA traffic, our cab driver dropped us off in front of terminal 2, near the end of the frighteningly long line of passengers trying to make it into Terminal 1, presumably headed for cattle transport Southwest. I don’t understand how they still haven’t fixed that problem (I mean the long line, not Southwest- although that could use some fixing too).
We looked for the Star Gold check-in, which we found on the east end of the Terminal, and were given our Steerage boarding passes immediately. We were asked if we had any sharp tools with us. A pair of scissors immediately found its way behind the NZ counter. Don’t ask me, he hasn’t traveled since 9/11 and I wasn’t about to say anything at the onset of a week in French Polynesia http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
We ran to make it to the X-Ray machine before a group of screaming soccer girls headed for the Virgin flight. The bored-to-her-tits rent-a-screener looked at our boarding passes and said “ Go this way” indicating the general public line, to which I answered flatly “No, I’ll go this way”, pointing to the empty Star Gold X-Ray line. She took the boarding passes again, saw the “* Gold” notation and fired back “Well, you didn’t tell me anything”. Silly me, I though she was looking at the boarding passes with the actual intent of reading them.
We took the elevator to the NZ lounge (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/nz.jpg) populated by a few lesbian couples. Soon enough, we found out that the MS Paul Gauguin was leaving Papeete with a full cargo of lesbians the following day.
I had been forced to leave all my electronic gizmos at home. That meant no cell phone, no laptop. No device with anything looking even remotely like a LCD screen was going to make it to Bora-Bora. Already in withdrawal, I checked the email for the last time on the lounge computer, got the latest conversion rate for the Comptoirs du Pacifique Francs ($1=135 CFP) while sipping a glass of Chandon. At 6:45 pm there we were with our lesbian friends on our way to gate 21 where a 767-300 was awaiting us.
Call me crazy, but I like 2+ engines when traveling over the Pacific. "Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim=ETOPS", I told Scott before boarding, and I don’t think he appreciated the humor. Boarding started and they called Business class passengers. We asked if they also meant * Gold and they said yes so here we went. It would be nice not to have to remind them of one of the benefits of Star Alliance.
Our seats were in steerage, but in row 19, one of the two exit rows above the wing. Ample legroom was available, but I almost had a coronary when I tried to recline the seat. THE **** THING WOULD NOT RECLINE. The prospect of 8 hours with a seat at 90° was not going down very well. I ran to the purser and told him that I had specifically asked if those seats reclined, and I was told that they did, and guess what they don’t and what are you going to do about it? A flight attendant overheard the conversation and tells me that she will unlock the seats after take off. They are locked for take off and landings. All right then, we’re OK to go.
After a short taxi, we take off from runway 24L and head WSW (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/hawaai.jpg) toward Tahiti. And I wait for the flight attendant who would not show up. I finally get the attention of another, and he tells me that on this specific aircraft, the seats actually do not recline, the previous FA was mistaken. Aggravating.
After he leaves, I decided to diddle around with knobs and stuff on the left side of the seat. I find a little lever that begs to be pulled, pushed, moved, massaged, whatever. I pull and BINGO all of a sudden our seats can recline!! To top it off, as the seat back reclines, the seat cushion actually moves forward, which makes for a very comfortable experience for a steerage seat. Go NZ!
The same FA comes back with the drink cart and says cheerfully “ And that will be to strong martinis for the two glamorous gentlemen!”. We laughed, agreed to the suggestion, asked him how he spotted us and he replied “Takes one to know one”. A few minutes later, he came back with two amenity kits from up front, saying “ Since we could not accommodate you in Business class, you might find these useful, but please do not open them before Papeete”. We were quite impressed with the kindness.
Dinner was forgettable fare, not bad but I wouldn’t write home about it. Announcements were made in English and heavily accented French which I thought was a nice touch.
Uneventful flight, I fell asleep dreaming of boungainvilleas, occasionally awakened by the 18 year old genius behind me who found nothing better to do than to press her bony knees against the back of my seat. I could have slapped her silly. I’d check the flight info screen periodically and found that we were flying quite close to Hawaii, probably to satisfy ETOPS rules. We ended up heading straight south (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/flinfo.jpg) to Papeete, leaving Bora-Bora about 300 km to the West (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/flinfo2.jpg) before landing toward to the West on Faaa’s only runway at about 2:00 am.
The 767 parked itself in front (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/faaa.jpg) of the terminal. There are no gates at Faaa, so we walked on the tarmac in the warm tropical breeze to enter the terminal. I love that. Tahitian musicians and singers meet every arrival, no matter how late. I went though the French passports lanes, Scott through “Others”. I asked for my passport to be stamped, which the “Policier des frontičres” wasn’t going to do, and I was out of there is a minute. It took Scott 30 minutes to join me.
<Two days in Tahiti, I’ll spare you the details. Except this one. Le Meridien (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/meridien.jpg), our hotel in Papeete, was filled with lesbians. You guessed it, Olivia Cruises had made a landing there as well. And here I was on FT a week earlier wondering how GLBT travelers would do in Tahiti http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif We actually witnessed the departure of the Paul Gauguin (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/gauguin.jpg) from the dock in Papeete the next day, and met the Gauguin again a few days later in Bora-Bora. Detail: Next to the Gauguin in Papeete were two huge Renaissance Cruise ships. They’ve been parked there since Renaissance went under after 9/11, and the local islands are feeling the pinch, particularly Raiatea, I understand>
PPT-BOB/Air Tahiti
We left for Bora-Bora on Air Tahiti (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/vt1.jpg) two days later, with a scheduled departure at 09:15 am. We arrived at the airport an hour earlier, two sleepy Tahitians scanned our luggage through the X-Ray machine before checking in. I am very glad that there does not appear to be a war against terror in French Polynesia. Our flight was on an ATR 72 (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/atr.jpg) and was almost empty. The Air Tahiti FA and ground crew wear this stunning uniform and a “tiare” flower above their ear and are frankly some of the most good-looking I have seen. Their friendliness was impressive. We took off on a dime, climbed to 2000 feet (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/tahiti.jpg) (at the most) and landed ten minutes later on Moorea (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/moorea.jpg) for a fifteen minutes stop before taking off for our final destination (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/bob1.jpg) that we reached after 45 minutes. FAs call these flights the milk run, I was told.
We landed on the runway build by G.I. during WW II. Apparently, 6,00 G.I.s were stationed in Bora-Bora in 1942. Not a bad spot to be stuck in. Particularly since Bora-Bora is seeing more Japanese visitors today that they ever welcomed between 42 and 45 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
< a week in Bora-Bora, I’ll also spare you the details only to say that it was just unreal>
BOB-PPT/ Air Tahiti
We took our boat on our motu for the Bora-Bora airport (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/bob2.jpg), which is built on a reef, around 4pm for a departure at 5pm. After a 20 minute ride through the stunningly turquoise waters of the lagoon (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/lagoon.jpg) (I really did not want to leave), we checked in for Air Tahiti flight 466 (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/atr2.jpg). This time it was a non-stop flight that landed in Faaa at 6:00 pm. Juice was served. Our connection to NZ 16 was not until a very uncivilized 2:30 am, so we placed our luggage in the lockers and took a “Le Truck” to downtown Papeete where we had “poisson cru au coco” and a Nutella-coco crępe at the local roulottes while we watched the Paul Gauguin leave again for its weekly run, lesbianless this time.
Bored with the scene of drunk French sailors and their goo-goo eyed Tahitian girlfriends, we headed back to Faaa on “le truck” and checked in at midnight in the Star Gold line. The Faaa facility is not air conditioned, so the cold NZ lounge was a welcome relief from the oppressive heat. It was quite crowded since there was a Hawaaian departure at 1 am. I watched French news on the giant TV screen, the first news I’d had in a long time. All these people had died (the Queen mother, Billy Wilder, the Middle East in shambles again) all of it was very depressing and I was glad I had been away from it all for a week.
PPT-LAX/ Air New Zealand
We boarded at 2:00 am, in a heat and boredom-induced coma. We had seats 10A and B, which are IMHO the best seats on the aircraft. No one in front since we are just behind the crew rest area, which on this aircraft is a separate compartment with solid walls. A generous cut-off in the wall gives more legroom than anyone would need. We were quite happy with the seats. The stairs were pulled back at 2:30 am, the aircraft pushed back and we started rolling onto the runway. We then made a complete U-turn and found ourselves where we started, in front of the terminal. The captain, a man with a strange speech impediment, told us that there was a problem, the nature of which he never trusted us enough to share, and that “Engineering” would look into it. Said “looking into it” lasted three hours, during which they served food and showed Zoolander.
We took off in full daylight at 6:00 am and landed at LAX a full three hours late.
In summary, Air New Zealand was good to us, I’d recommend them to anyone. Please by all means stay away from Bora-Bora, it’s a horrible horrible island that really can take no additional visitor http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif I had a horrible (http://www.hometown.aol.com/erikpascal/horrible.jpg), horrible time. Please stay away. I mean it. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif
[This message has been edited by Droneklax (edited 04-04-2002).]