Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Air Tahiti (not Nui) Reliability? Should I be safe and schedule early flights?

The end of our Bora Bora visit involves flying BOB-PPT on a Tuesday, before departing Wednesday morning PPT-AKL on TN. I'm looking at scheduling the BOB-PPT flights on Air Tahiti. Seeing as no flights get in early enough on Wednesday, we're returning Tuesday and spending one night in PPT. The last three flights of the day for BOB-PPT on Air Tahiti are as follows:

15:25-16:15 on #271
17:20-18:10 on #411
17:50-18:40 on #480

I think I'm afraid to fly #480 because if something goes wrong we miss our PPT-AKL the next day, which in turn means we miss our same-day AKL-SYD (which is on a different ticket than PPT-AKL). So, I'm leaning toward the #411. However, part of me wants to be overbearingly careful and grab the #271 just in case there is somehow a problem with both 411 and 480.

Am I just worrying too much? How reliable is Air Tahiti? Is taking the #411 hedging my bets enough? Or, given the fact that I risk screwing up two separate tickets if there is a problem enough of a reason to play it safe and take the 271? With late checkout available to me in BOB and nothing planned for PPT, there is certainly no rush... just worries.

Thanks.

Apparently air tahiti is not very reliable. We are flying to Tahiti in May from Sydney and then back to LAX. They have changed their flights at least 6 times including complete date changes where they have iliminated entire days.
Good luck

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Apparently air tahiti is not very reliable. We are flying to Tahiti in May from Sydney and then back to LAX. They have changed their flights at least 6 times including complete date changes where they have iliminated entire days.
Good luck

I believe you're talking about Air Tahiti Nui (TN). I'm asking about Air Tahiti, the airline used for inter-island travel. Different airline.

Given the earliest flight is only 2 hours earlier, it is cheap insurance. Air Tahiti runs a large network with heavily utilized planes and no spares, so disruptions are high impact. But you really should buy trip insurance for this type of travel (and ticketing).

We are flying to Tahiti in May from Sydney and then back to LAX. I don't think you are, actually -- TN (Air Tahiti Nui) pulled out of SYD 23 March through 23 October of this year because of low demand. The nearest station they serve is AKL, and for this period they were going to put their code on a QF SYD-AKL shuttle so as not to leave Sydney customers high and dry. Double-check your arrangements to be sure they're current; they should read SYD -(QF)-AKL-(TN)-PPT-(TN)-LAX.