Business Class Flights to Tahiti

Air Tahiti Nui, French Polynesia's carrier, flies Faa'a nonstop from Los Angeles daily and from Seattle several times a week on the 787-9, with its lie-flat Poerava Business cabin in a 2-2-2 layout; Air France flies Los Angeles–Papeete as the last leg of its Paris service, with its lie-flat business cabin; Delta flies Delta One from Los Angeles; and United flies Polaris from San Francisco. French bee flies from San Francisco with premium economy only. Every business cabin on the route is lie-flat; none is First Class. From the rest of the country, a same-day connection to Los Angeles or San Francisco — usually in a lie-flat transcontinental seat on the same ticket — is the routing.

Most flights leave the West Coast in the afternoon and land in Papeete in the evening, which shapes the itinerary: Air Tahiti's flights to Bora Bora (50 minutes), Taha'a and Raiatea (45), Rangiroa and Fakarava in the Tuamotus (an hour) run in daylight, so the first night is in Papeete or on Moorea — the resorts at Punaauia and Le Méridien are 15 minutes from the airport, or the Moorea ferry takes 30 minutes from the port — and the overwater bungalow is the next morning. A few flights arrive early enough for a same-evening connection; we check. Faa'a is small and 10 minutes from town; Air Tahiti Nui's lounge serves the return, which is an overnight flight landing in Los Angeles in the morning.

The dry season, May through October, is the reason to go — cooler, drier, with the trade winds and the best visibility for diving — and July and August are the peak, when Heiva fills Papeete with dance and the French summer holidays fill the resorts. Christmas–New Year is the second peak. Humpback whales are in the lagoons from August to October. November through April is the warm, wet season, with short heavy showers and the lowest fares of the year, below our $4,300 starting fare from Los Angeles; February and March are the wettest.