Air Tahiti Nui Seattle To Paris Flights Scrapped As Of January 2025

Not at all surprising. The Seattle market is tough for long haul. There is a lot of it, but not all of it works well.

This should come as a warning to Alaska Airlines that long haul 787 service is not a guaranteed success

They could have been a bit more proactive about rescheduling flights when they did this. I had a J award seat in February on SEA-CDG and my flight got switched to LAX-CDG. With no connecting flight between LAX and SEA.

I found a unicorn. And it was taken away!

I loved this flight and heard about its demise on Tuesday when flying to LAX. I
Am still willing to fly to lax to position but that also means there are way less options for Alaska loyalists in Seattle who don’t wish to fly on AA/BA metal.

We are flying one more leg in early Jan and I’m happy we snagged seats.

The two routes (via Los Angeles or Seattle) are roughly the same length, as they’re within 35 miles of one another.

I am reading this wrong as it is nearer 900 miles from LAX to SEA.

Not exactly. AS has a huge hub in Seattle, with banks of flights and significant feed. A SEA-PPT flight is pure leisure, to a very niche market, not at all top of destinations that Americans go to en masse. The problem with Seattle is that it doesn't need to 2 airlines duking it out for control. Delta doesn't belong in Seattle, and never needed to be there in the first place. It decided to add Seattle as a hub to fund TPAC services, which do well enough, and would not work with the feed, but the domestic network DL runs in Seattle bleeds red ink, and is subsidized by profits from other hub markets. Seattle also doesn't need 4 airlines on SEA-TPE. There are pockets of saturation. In the long run, AS will probably offer a limited number of long haul routes on wide bodies, mixing up some core Asia with core Europe and not much else.

If Alaska gets Heathrow slots, it will have competition. Not sure if people want to Gatwick.

Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul all have competition.

Would Alaska want to fly to Stuttgart, Birmingham, Nice, Kaohsiung, and Osaka instead? No.

Flying cdg-sea on 1/2. Looks like I may on the last flight in that direction.

Gcmap.com

The great circle path from Paris to Tahiti passes nearly over Los Angeles, at a distance of 9765 miles. Routing via Seattle instead of LAX only adds 35 miles to the great circle path, for a total distance of 9800 miles.

Also, the Air Tahiti Nui business class hard product is perfectly fine. Have taken it numerous times and prefer it to United and Air France business class when going to Tahiti.

Flew them CDG-SEA this year. Very good daytime flight, service, amenities. Snagged it using Alaska miles: 55K in J. They use CDG Terminal 2 B/C check-in area which is calm versus madhouse E. The lounge was good as well. No complaints. Sad to see this unique option go away.

Thanks gir the info.

When is the change effective? And which days of the week are getting the additional capacity?

Sad to see it go, as it was one of the easier business class awards to book out of SEA. But that probably correlates with its underperformance.

While we are losing this 2x weekly service, SEA is gaining year round 5x weekly SAS flights to CPH, seasonal 2x weekly Edelweiss flights to ZRH, and Finnair is increasing its seasonal flights to HEL from 3x to 5x weekly. Overall a significant increase in connectivity.

Hi Ben! When you write that TN exclusively flies PPT-Paris, what about French Bee via SFO?

I thought AF flew the route via LAX, but their website was acting up...it only showed a special fare LAX - ....CAIRO! How ironic and funny....

Derek is correct in that this signals a potential oversaturation of the SEA market. While it's a large enough O&D destination, it's still smaller than LAX/SFO, and there's only so much connecting traffic you can feed as well.

4x airlines flying to TPE is about balancing capacity along the West Coast. BR and CI reduced some frequencies from SFO and LAX to offset it. In addition, TPE is all about onwards connectivity to Asia, not point to point. SEA as a TPAC hub looks nothing like the powerhouse UA has built up SFO to be. So the airlines are capitalizing off of that.

Furthermore, I'd say this is compounded by the increasingly saturated West Coast market. We have way too much capacity to the South Pacific sale we don't need every airline flying to BNE all of a sudden too.

There are some opportunities for AS to launch longhaul routes, but the routes to do so are increasingly limited.

Perhaps traffic to Egypt is in the proverbial toilet after Ben's adventure.

Serves them right.

As a resident of Tahiti, I am delighted that the flights to CDG have all been refocused on LAX.
SEA offers no advantages: an inconvenient airport, not very easy transit with no dedicated passage and a shabby, dirty lounge. At LAX everything is better for transit.
Another advantage of refocusing flights on LAX is that it will be easier to find space for LAX with a more flexible yield.
I think the airline also realised that Tahitians weren't getting off at SEA.
It is regrettable that, since the flights are code-shared with AS, the airline does not have the right to use the AS terminal at SEA with a better quality lounge than the one proposed.
So I'm delighted with this change.

When is the last scheduled January CDG-SEA flight?

I'm also flying CDG-SEA but on 1/5. I've not received a change of itinerary notice yet. I wonder if it will still operate.

They should go through YVR as distance are same and may open a market especially for people who can't travel to the us

I agree they may benefit from having a second flight not via the US