I recently posted on my success in booking the St. Regis Bora Bora for just 48K Marriott points per night (See: Booked: St. Regis Bora Bora for 48K per night). A few readers asked how I intended to get there — which is a good question since there aren’t exactly a ton of options for getting there on points. In this post, I’ll lay out how I went about determining the options (a key step get getting started on any award), how I narrowed things down, and what I ultimately booked.
Figuring out the options
Whenever I’m trying to figure out how to get to a destination on miles, my first stop is the Wikipedia page for the destination airport. That page has a list of airlines and destinations that will tell me which airlines fly into the airport. That allows me to reverse engineer an award by figuring out which of those airlines are allied with partners I could use to book. In the case of Papeete (PPT) airport in Tahiti, that list is pretty compact.
I didn’t see myself flying via Chile or New Caledonia, so that eliminated LATAM and Aircalin right away. French Bee has had some good fares out of San Francisco, but I’m not really comfortable with choosing a low-cost carrier and risking that a flight gets canceled or the airline folds a la Primera Air. I’d take a risk with a low cost carrier on a trip to Europe knowing that there are a billion ways to get there at the last minute on miles if something goes wrong with my original flight — but I can’t chance not getting to Tahiti on time for my 5-night reservation at the St. Regis. So my options became limited pretty quickly.
Miles required
Out of the various options from the US, I considered how many miles each award would cost and potential sources of the points. Here were the options as I saw them (lowest-priced options in bold):
Carrier that flies to PPT | Partner Miles | Source(s) | Economy Award | Business Award |
Air France | N/A | Amex, Chase, Citi, SPG/Marriott | From 25.5K | From 64K |
Air New Zealand | United | Chase | 35K | 80K |
Air Tahiti Nui | AA (also Delta) | AA credit cards, SPG/Marriott | 40K | 80K |
Hawaiian Airlines** | N/A | Amex | 27.5K | 47.5K |
Hawaiian Airlines** | Virgin Atlantic | Amex, Chase, Citi, SPG/Marriott | 27.5K | 47.5K |
United Airlines | N/A | United credit cards, Chase | 35K | 70K |
**Note: Award rates on Hawaiian Airlines are based on originating in Hawaii
There are a lot of variables in collecting miles, but I also thought it might make sense to give a quick glance at how you might generate those miles based on the credit card with the best category bonus for earning miles that can be transferred to the corresponding program. That might help you either focus spend on an award goal or compare costs in terms of how you generate the miles. Note that for Hawaiian miles, I used 4x at US Restaurants and US Supermarkets (on up to $25K per year, then 1x) on the newly-revamped Gold Card despite the fact that the Platinum card earns 5x on flights since it is unlikely that anyone would focus on manufacturing flight spend to generate miles.
Carrier that flies to PPT | Best CC & bonus category | Spend for Economy Award | Spend for Biz Award | Other notes |
Air France | Ink Cash: 5x Office Supply | $5,100 | $12,800 | If you can take advantage of a transfer bonus (25% from Amex comes around now and then), the Amex Gold offers similar return. |
Air New Zealand | Ink Cash: 5x Office Supply | $7,000 | $16,000 | |
Air Tahiti Nui | Various AA cards at 1x | $40K | $80K | |
Hawaiian Airlines | Amex Gold: 4x US Restaurants / US Supermarkets on up to $25K per year (then 1x) | $6,875 | $11,875 | If you can take advantage of a transfer bonus (25% from Amex expired over the summer), you could do even better. |
Hawaiian Airlines via Virgin | Ink Cash: 5x Office Supply | $5,500 | $9,500 | If you can take advantage of a transfer bonus (currently 30% from Citi, formerly 30% from Amex), you may do even better. |
United Airlines | Ink Cash: 5x Office Supply | $7,000 | $14,000 |
If you’re looking to fly in economy class, it might be worth keeping an eye out for airfare sales. We recently published a sale from San Francisco on United for just over $600 round trip (since expired). That would be something just north of 40K Ultimate Rewards points round trip if you have the Sapphire Reserve and book through the Chase portal. French Bee also runs similarly cheap fare sales from time to time and competition may keep fares reasonable enough to book paid flights over award flights in economy class.
It’s also worth noting that I included American Airlines at 1x above since that is the best you would do based on regular credit card spend. Note that for American miles, your best bet is probably to use a card that earns more than 2% cash back and then buy the miles when American puts them on sale for under 2c each. For example, if you were to earn 2.5% cash back and buy American miles for 1.88c each, it would be like having earned 1.33 miles per dollar spent, which changes spending requirements above.
Narrowing down options
In my case, I was able to eliminate a couple of options pretty easily.
United’s flight to Tahiti from San Francisco is seasonal and will not be running when I need to be there. Based on a few searches, saver economy appears to be available on some flights, others range from 45K to 80K in economy class. I did not see business class availability readily available.
Air New Zealand rarely ever releases business class award space and it also involves overshooting the destination a good bit. Flying extra time, in economy class, and without a stopover in New Zealand added up to a quick elimination for me. That said, if you’re willing to fly in economy class, you can find decent availability on United flights to New Zealand and then on to Tahiti on Air New Zealand for 35K each way in economy class, with $5.60 in taxes departing the US and just over $50 on the way back.
That narrowed my choices to Air France or Air Tahiti Nui out of Los Angeles or Hawaiian Airlines out of Honolulu.
Air Tahiti Nui looks pretty nice, but it’s the only one of the three that does not have lie-flat seats, which put it in third place to start the race. On the flip side, it is the easiest award in the sense that you can book from your home city to Tahiti on a single award if you can find flights on AA to position you to Los Angeles.
Hawaiian Airlines does also offer the ability to fly from its North American gateways on a single award, though that will cost an additional 20K in economy class or 40K in business class — assuming you can find saver availability from North America to Hawaii. If you use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly on Hawaiian, you would need to book a separate award from the West Coast to Hawaii at those same rates (20K economy or 40K business). Oddly, Virgin only includes the West Coast in its award chart for Hawaiian Airlines.
In the end, Air Tahiti Nui did not have any availability around my dates — which cut my options down to Air France out of Los Angeles or Hawaiian our of Honolulu. I’d have to position to and from for either option since I’m located on the East Coast.
Finding availability
As I insinuated in my post on booking the St. Regis Bora Bora, I found availability near the end of the booking calendar. Marriott’s booking calendar extends beyond the booking calendars of most airline programs. Generally, airlines allow award tickets to be booked about 331 days in advance, though it varies a bit by program. This meant that when I booked my stay at the St. Regis, flights were not yet loaded into the system for my dates. That made the reservation a bit of a gamble since I didn’t know how I’d get there.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Air France offers availability farther out than most airlines. Here was the calendar for next September for flights from Papeete, Tahiti to Los Angeles in business class (I took this screen shot a few days ago).
As you can see, pricing varies from 73,500 miles to 337,000 miles one-way thanks to the new Flying Blue dynamic pricing. You’ll notice that there are no dates available for 64K as shown in the chart above. That was the low end rate shown by the Flying Blue mileage estimator, but I didn’t actually see flights available at that price (though I did not search the entire calendar).
Hawaiian Airlines has a limited schedule to and from Tahiti, only flying a couple days of the week. However, I pretty reliably found 2 saver business class seats available during the last couple of months of the schedule and saver economy seats readily available. You have to log in to your Hawaiian Miles account to search availability (just as you do with Air France), but it’s pretty easy to find as long as you’re looking near the end of the calendar. I found that availability I saw on Hawaiian’s website also showed up on American’s site.
Traveling with a lap infant to Tahiti?
My next consideration is the fact that we’re traveling with a baby. It is generally difficult to get three award tickets in business class at the saver level (and “anytime” levels are unreasonable). We’re willing to make the trip with our son as a lap infant. I know that people have strong opinions on that, and I’ll leave that argument for the commenters. The fact is that we’re planning to bring him in business class and had to figure out the most cost-effective way to do it.
Air France, and Hawaiian both charge 10% of the adult fare & taxes/fees for a lap infant — as do all of the other airlines whose miles you can use to book award flights to Tahiti except Virgin Atlantic. Virgin charges very reasonable rates for infants at just 1K miles each way in economy class or 5K each way in business class.
Unfortunately, Virgin Atlantic couldn’t find any availability in Hawaiian business class. I had Virgin search multiple dates in June, July, and August 2019 when Hawaiian’s site showed 2 saver awards available and American’s site showed the same — and Virgin agents did not see business class availability. They did see economy class seats available, but nothing in business class. I called multiple times to be sure I wasn’t just running into a roadblock with a single agent who was unfamiliar with how to look up availability. I don’t know whether Virgin just sees less availability than other Hawaiian partners or blocks these awards altogether, but I was unsuccessful in booking Hawaiian Airlines business class with Virgin Atlantic miles
That meant being stuck ponying up 10% for a lap infant — on top of positioning to either Los Angeles or Honolulu.
What I booked
Based on all of the above, I narrowed my choices down to Air France or Hawaiian Airlines. In the end, I decided to do both. I did that because of cash prices — I found Hawaiian had cheaper rates flying westbound and Air France had cheaper fares flying eastbound, which made a difference in lap infant fees.
Positioning is obviously the challenge since I live on the East Coast. However, my wife will have a Southwest Companion Pass through December 31, 2019. I’m banking on Southwest getting its act together on starting up Hawaii flights and then I think positioning costs will be reasonable each way (and we have a healthy stash of Southwest Rapid Rewards points). While in the past, I would have viewed positioning as an inconvenience, I’m actually glad to do it this time. Traveling with a baby has been a bit more challenging that I’d have imagined and I think breaking up the trip with a night or two in Los Angeles and Honolulu might help us ease our son into the time changes and be less stressful than the 24 or 30 hours or more of travel time on a continuous itineraries.
Bottom line
Options to get to Tahiti on miles are not as plentiful as to most destinations in Europe or Asia as there just aren’t many airlines flying to Papeete (and not all of them are in alliances). However, if you plan in advance, there are some potentially reasonable options using Air France / Flying Blue miles or using Hawaiian Miles or Virgin Atlantic miles – particularly if you can take advantage of one of the transfer bonuses we see to those programs every year. While past transfer bonuses are no guarantee of future bonuses, you can take a look at our Current point transfer bonuses page to see both current and past bonuses and gauge whether you might be able to plan on them in the future.
[…] around eight hours each way. However, business class award flights to Tahiti can be hard to come by as Nick explained recently, so these cheap paid flights could be worth considering if you’re planning a trip in that […]
[…] ✎ 消息來源 TPG, FrequentMiler […]
We just returned from a J class Europe trip that had a young couple with a child traveling in Business. Why anyone would think that having a very young child in Business is a good idea is beyond me. Just because you can doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to subject every other passenger, many who actually paid for the flight with something other than airline crypto currency, to spending 10+ hours with a child who is obviously also not to keen on being on a long flight.
For all those who are ready to rip me a new one, don’t bother unless you’ve been fl.ying as a passenger since 1966.
Cool opinion. Cool fact: humans have kids.
FWIW, Korean Air has a sweet spot on their chart to fly Air France LAX-PPT at only 90k roundtrip in business. Saver space on this route is practically nonexistent, but it has popped up.
As much as my wife and I may hate it, we’re likely going to fly economy to PPT from LAX using Air France FB. For early December, United has one way flights from PPT-SFO for $240, which is pretty hard to beat for the return. I love flying Biz as much as anyone, but for the 8 hour flight, redeye both ways, I’ll probably just tough it out. Anyone have experience with Air France economy or United 787 economy?
[…] Are there any good ways to get to Tahiti on miles? – Frequent Miler […]
You mentioned that Air Tahiti Nui was the only airline of the three to feature an angled flat seat in business. Well, unless something has changed recently, Air France also (still) features an angled flat on their 777 for this route.
https://corporate.airfrance.com/en/news/air-frances-new-travel-cabins-take-bamako-and-papeete
https://www.airfrance.us/US/en/common/guidevoyageur/classeetconfort/nouvelle-business-airfrance.htm
Not that it probably would have changed your thought process, but on the newish AA MileUp card or whatever it is can’t you get 2X AA miles on groceries? It seems like that might beat buying AA miles.
Yikes! I hadn’t realised American didn’t have a credit card transfer partner until reading this and wondering why the spend was so high. If you need to pay for a lot of hotels, I guess there’s always Marriott and a points transfer (hopefully with a transfer bonus).
Very good point. I hadn’t considered that!
I was jealous until I read that you were travelling from the East Coast — with a baby. Yikes! Find some babysitting. This will be a bear of a short trip, and your enjoyment of Tahiti will definitely be reduced. And I say that as a dad and as someone who has vacationed in Tahiti.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Tahiti and I’m in the early stages of planning a trip. But it would be a longer trip than yours. Am I correct that a roundtrip award ticket on UA to Australia or New Zealand would be the same price but with a free stopover in PPT?
Finally, what’s the current cost of airfare from PPT to Bora Bora? This has always been the problem with Bora Bora. I call it the “Maldives problem.” Like you can get to Male, but they you have to pay a ton of money to get beyond Male, and then you’re trapped in a resort hotel with ridiculous add-on expenses. When I visited Tahiti, I took the ferry to Moorea to avoid these budget-busting add-ons.
The flights to Bora Bora are about $150 RT per person. Then a $130 or so boat transfer to the hotel. Not as bad as the Maldives.
So about $560 per couple to get from PPT to your hotel? Not great, of course, but not completely insane. But what would the food tab likely be at the St. Regis? And you’d be entirely captive, right?
It’s for sure not a cheap vacation, even with the hotel taken care of on points and the flights mostly covered on miles. It’ll be a splurge beyond the norm for us still.
I intend to use annual credits from CSR and/or Prestige to cover transportation to the St. Regis. Hopefully, Marriott GCs will work at legacy SPG properties by then and I’ll have $600 in Marriott GCs purchased courtesy of the upgrade I did to SPG lux right before my account anniversary (so I could get the $300 credit twice). I’ll also (likely) have the chance to pick up Marriott GCs at 20% off when Daily Getaways rolls around next April if need be.
I could also open a card like the Arrival Plus and use the welcome offer to cover several hundred bucks in food charged to my room at the hotel. We’ll see what the situation dictates down the road.
You are more or less captive at the resort. We’ll bring some basic stuff we can make in the room — we probably won’t eat 3 meals a day in the hotel restaurants. When we have access to free breakfast (and we will thanks to my Platinum status), we tend to eat 2 meals a day — breakfast and one more. I imagine we’ll eat our own food one or two nights and the hotel food ~3 nights. It won’t be cheap, but it won’t likely drive us bankrupt.
I’ll certainly let you know how it worked out after the fact — but you’ll be waiting a while on the conclusion :-).
You can also book the interisland flights on Air Tahiti with Ultimate Rewards. Not a great value for URs, but that is what I plan to do.
So, just because you got “cheap” hotel points, you ended up paying to fly to “save money”? Talk about ridiculous.
Always book hotels around flights, not vice-versa. And never book a destination because it’s “a deal”…
We’ve wanted to go to Bora Bora for years. Paying ~$180 each way for a lap infant seemed reasonable enough to me.
I don’t generally book trips around hotels or flights — I typically book trips to destinations. I write about the hotels and flights sometimes because readers here are presumably collecting points and determining how they would like to put them to use.
In this case, the hotel is a destination. It might not be an attractive one to you. That’s fine. Some people like to buy designer jeans. Some like to splurge on vintage wines. Others prefer to focus on tending to their garden. Some people like to golf or ride horses. Just because I don’t share those interests doesn’t make them wrong or unworthy of one’s time and energy. I like to travel – and I’ve slept in a range of places from $3/night hammocks on the beach to some of the more luxurious chain properties in the world. Everything’s an experience. and I enjoy the variety. I certainly don’t judge those who would rather get 20 nights out of the points I’m using for 5 — that’s why Marriott has six thousand plus properties around the world. People have different preferences.
I’ll plan my trips the way that makes me happy and I expect you’ll do the same. Hopefully you’ll pick up a useful piece of info along the way at some point — and if not, hopefully you’ll at least enjoy reading and commenting. I know I’ll continue to enjoy reading your thoughts — whether critical or not.
[…] I recently posted on my success in booking the St. Regis Bora Bora for just 48K Marriott points per night (See: Booked: St. Regis Bora Bora for 48K per night). A few readers asked how I intended to get there — which is a good question since there aren’t exactly a ton of options for getting there on points. In this post, I’ll lay out how I went about determining the options (a key step get getting started on any award), how I narrowed things down, and what I ultimately booked.LEARN MORE! […]
What is the purpose of flying all the way to Hawaii from the middle of the country in coach just to catch a 5 hour flight in business class?
I don’t understand that either. Often in this hobby, I feel like people force unpleasant scenarios just to be able to say they’ve been to a certain hotel or exotic destination without it really being that comfortable.
If flying to Hawaii for a few days before continuing on to Bora Bora is an unpleasant scenario, sign me up for unending pain & punishment, please.
Fair enough. If the objective is vacationing in HNL, makes total sense. It sounded from your post like the point was to be in lie flat business. i was recently looking at the same routes, and for me, the Hawaii business class just wasn’t worth it becuase the flight become so short. So I ended up in economy from LAX on air france.
Exactly. You wrote “positioning” at least 3 times instead of vacationing, which is why I think many people commenting are questioning the choices. You even say “for a day or two” because traveling with the kid is harder than expected so it definitely doesn’t read like this is the ideal itinerary you would want.
Air Tahiti Nui has lie flat seats.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericrosen/2018/03/22/air-tahiti-nui-boeing-787-9-dreamliners-begin-flying-in-november/#68446cd16508
*will have
Interesting! I hadn’t heard. Looks like they start service to Los Angeles with them on November 7th of this year. Wish I had seen that before I booked!
I’ve made over 14 trips to French Polynesia from the USA (NYC). First trip was on Air New Zealand, via UA MP miles in business. Flew first to RAR (Rarotonga) them onto PPT (Papeete). Think mileage cost was 80,000 RT. And this was during the high season (June / July). Back then NZ was flying the 747-200 & 767 on this trip. The days of 80K RT biz class are over. I have taken several RTs on TN, in coach, using AA miles, without any problems. Never tried AF as they seemed to always be striking or threatening to strike during the Tahiti high season and did not want to risk being caught up on that. Look forward to trying TNs new 787s. Now if TN would just lower their fares a bit to be more competitive with others. Case in point: I can fly EWR-PPT RT on UA, econ, for about $1100. Same flight on TN comes up around $1600.
Doing almost the same thing for us. We have our daughter who will be 2 when we are traveling. We did chicago to HNL. Overnight in Hawaii and take the Hawaiian flight out there. We booked the AF flight home since it was the only daytime flight back to the states.