If you’ve ever wanted to visit French Polynesia, this is a great time to do so in terms of award availability.
In this post:
Air Tahiti Nui awards to & from Seattle wide open
Tahiti is a gorgeous destination, though getting there on miles & points can be challenging. Fortunately at the moment we’re seeing a lot more award availability than usual.
Air Tahiti Nui has just launched a new 2x weekly flight between Seattle (SEA) and Papeete (PPT), and award seats are readily available in business class. Many flights have at least two business class award seats, while lots of flights even have four business class award seats.
There’s the most availability through February 2023, though there’s at least some business class award availability as of now in all months after that as well, through the end of the schedule.
Air Tahiti Nui operates Boeing 787-9s, and you can find my Air Tahiti Nui business class review. While it’s not a cutting edge product, the airline offers a pleasant experience, and a nice soft product.
If you don’t want to make Tahiti your final destination, you can use this award availability to connect to New Zealand, as Air Tahiti Nui flies to Auckland as well.
Redeem Alaska or American miles on Air Tahiti Nui
Your two best bets for booking these seats are through Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan and American Airlines AAdvantage:
- Alaska Mileage Plan charges 60,000 miles for Air Tahiti Nui one-way business class from the United States to Tahiti, or 80,000 miles for Air Tahiti Nui one-way business class from the United States to New Zealand (and you can have a stopover in Tahiti enroute)
- American AAdvantage charges 80,000 miles for Air Tahiti Nui one-way business class, regardless of whether you travel to Tahiti or New Zealand; however, if you want a stopover of more than 24 hours in Tahiti, you’ll have to book that as two separate awards
These awards can be ticketed directly on the Alaska or American websites. Both airlines also have award calendars, allowing you to see availability for a month at a time. Both airlines offer free award redeposits, so you can lock in an award now, and then cancel later if your plans change.
Bottom line
At the moment Air Tahiti Nui has a significant amount of business class award availability on its Seattle to Tahiti route, including for four or more passengers. This is a fantastic opportunity to plan a getaway to French Polynesia, and you can even connect to New Zealand from there. This is a great use of Alaska Mileage Plan and American AAdvantage miles.
Anyone plan on booking an Air Tahiti Nui business class award?
(Tip of the hat to AwardWallet)
It would be helpful if you could mention which transferable points currencies that could be used to boom this (if any).
Guys- Beware of traveling to Tahiti in our winter (their summer). October-May you will likely get rain every day. Maybe not the entire day but it's possible. It is their rainy season.
Just grabbed 4RT business together for January. Thanks for the tip! The SEA-PPT flight is daytime. I was tempted to just do E+ at 45k.
The award pricing for these flights is just too much for awards from the US to Tahiti on American. The flying time between LAX/SFO and PPT is something like 7 hours. It's a popular route that you an easily fly for around $350 in economy, o/w. For such a short flight, I see no good reason for it to cost 80k in business.
Just snagged 2 business awards (SEA-PPT) for Dec over Christmas. Used AA miles, booked two one ways, one with my AA miles, one with my wife's. AAdvantage wanted to charge over $1k to combine our miles so we could do a RT booking! December is the start of the wet season in Tahiti so that may explain the availability.
Now the real challenge will be finding accommodations we can afford.
Thanks, Ben! Was able to score three (3) Business seats for SEA-PPT in April.
Just did 2 rt in business from Sea to papeete for Thanksgiving
I just looked at the full calendar on AA's site and found nothing at all. Could it all be gone that quickly?
@ emag -- I'm still seeing it. Maybe take another look or try a different browser?
Not surprising given that this route makes no sense.
I believe it's only 10k more AA miles to route from Europe to PPT via SEA if you can find availability.