collin_mcclellan1

Does anyone have any insights into whether Air Tahiti is planning to increase the frequency of their routes from PPT to BOB. I'm planning to go in September and my flight which arrives at 5am isn't showing an available flight until 4pm to BOB and for my flight back there is only a single flight back at 1pm but my flight back to LAX is at midnight.

I'm really hoping more routes open up for my dates as I may end up cancelling due to the terrible routing being offered to BOB and back to PPT

FleyeSkyHigh

A few quick updates.

Bora Bora Conrad, along with many of the other high end resorts on the island, have moved their official opening up to July 15th. That should be interesting but only a handful of travelers, likely all from Europe, will be able to get into FP for the last two weeks in July so I expect there will not be any meaningful occupancy and staff that has stayed will be able to handle the light demand.

Air Tahiti Nui has stopped selling flights to and from Los Angeles for July and August on their TN7 and TN8 flights where LAX is the middle stop point between Paris and Papette. That indicates they do not expect to be able to transit through the U.S. until at least Sept 1st and will likely be re-routing those flights through Vancouver, B.C. I expect Air France to follow in avoiding LAX by stopping over in Pointe-ŕ-Pitre, Guadeloupe (which for AF makes the flight entirely domestic).

For the month of August and onward Air Tahiti Nui is still selling their 4x weekly PPT-LAX and LAX-PPT TN101/102 and TN111/112 flight numbers that do not continue to/from Paris but if the EU bans residents of the U.S. upon their border reopening (which is highly anticipated) I expect that FP will follow suit (as they will be heavily influenced by France to do so) and at that point I expect Air Tahiti Nui and Air France will not operate to and from the U.S. until at least Sept 1st.

Air Tahiti Nui will also not operate any flights to and from Tokyo until at least October 1st. Sadly one of their brand new 787-900s has already been parked and prepared for long term storage in Papette and with New Zealand and Japan off the schedule until at least October I do not expect it to come back any time soon.

French Bee may drop Papette as a destination altogether. They have no flights scheduled after the end of August and the flights that they have scheduled for July are no longer for sale. They are still selling August through SFO but if they can't get a stop over point outside of the U.S. that is financially feasible I expect them to cancel and abandon Tahiti as a destination at that time. French Bee is in peril of not continuing as a going concern. They have three new 350-900 aircraft that are all leased from a third party and had a highly leveraged balance sheet even before the virus arrived.

United is still planning on flights resuming from SFO as of August 1st but the developing EU situation may nix that as well.

Long and short of it is that while Tahiti may be re-opening July 15th it will mainly be targeted to those limited visitors coming from Europe.

FleyeSkyHigh

Yea, I noticed that as well. I also noticed that the only island with any even close to meaningful bookings through September is Bora Bora. All the others islands are wide open with many not even having one passenger booked (which will be problematic as ATR42s have issues with being underweight). But back to the Bora Bora flights. The odd thing is that while some flights are fully and over booked most others are wide open. It doesn't make much sense and the only think I can caulk it up to right now is that perhaps a number of travel agencies automatically re-booked passengers which is jamming up all their inventory (especially since agents can directly book VT flights after the company switched to a modern GDS reservation system). I can see in Amadeus (the reservation system they now use) that for Sept 5th and 12th both flights are actually overbooked.

To answer your question, I do not expect Air Tahiti to add any additional bookable flights. In the past they had been known to a day or two before to throw an extra flight into the mix usually about 5 - 15 minutes after a scheduled flights but that was when there was walk up local demand. Interestingly, after they switched to using Amadeus for the reservation system in 2019 these add-on flights never showed up in any GDS and were basically only for sale by Air Tahiti counters and then the passengers were distributed over both flights to make weight available for freight. At least prior to Amadeus taking over these additional flights could be booked by their website but that is not the case any more. But I digress as I would not expect any additional capacity to be added however, I would expect many cancellations especially if U.S. flights are cut back or eliminated through September. It sounds like you will be coming from the U.S. so I think the bigger question is will Air Tahiti Nui even be operating to and from LAX by September. I sure hope so but at this point it is far less than a certainty.

eye84u

Thanks for the "behind the scenes" updates FleyeSkyHigh. It is much appreciated.

Neild

This is a Q for Le Meridian folks but maybe some one can help me with the issue.
So here it goes I made an advance points reservation for December 2020 before all this mess. I have not yet gone ahead & deducted the points.So my Q is what is Le Meridian doing for travelers in my case scenario. I tried calling them ...no response & also called Marriott but they are unable to help too. Any insight is very much appreciated?

yakel

Aren't you in the wrong forum for this 'Q'?

Neild

I am aware that this is a Conrad forum but am hoping that some members maybe on both the forums & may have something that could help me.

avnmgr

I’ve been following the points since n this hotel and the entire month of June 2021 is over 500,000 per day and as the cHange the calendar to July the first 2 days say sold out. Has anyone seen that? They just opened up how could they be sold out?

DUflyer

Is New Zealand off the schedule until at least October? I have award flights AKL-PPT booked for September.

Regarding the Meridien, it is under renovation until mid 2021 as far as I know. You will have to change your December 2020 booking Neild.

Cynapse

You'll run into this a lot if you try to book rooms, its very normal. They haven't released the rooms yet. And when they do, don't be surprised if there are no 89k points night available, a lot of times days just never hit the calendar at the base point level. All you can do is continually refresh the calendar throughout the months/year and something should eventually open up. Unfortunately this is the game we have to play to be successful in base points bookings at hotels like this.

Also, regarding the 500k nights, if you actually click on the day you'll see there are other cheaper available options, usually in the ~170k points/night range. But those obviously aren't good rates you'd want to book anyway (unless you were swimming in points).

avnmgr

Thanks! I’ve never seen it actually say sold out a year in advance - only large reward redemption rates.

Traveler Dave

Looks like Conrad BB hasn’t posted any points nights for July 2021. Hilton Moorea has. Womder what the lag from Conrad is all about?

TD

KRUXED

i was able to book standard points rates for 2021 back at the end of April..

edited: apologies as I skipped over the July part

Traveler Dave

This resort is still not posting any availability beyond June of 2020 for points or cash. Just has “sold out” for every day in July that other Hilton properites, including Moorea, have posted.

Any idea what is going on there?

TD

josephstern

I assume you mean June of 2021 there.

Maybe they have just decided to stop taking new reservations to get a better idea of the state of the world before the move further?