Fiji Airways will be launching seasonal 2x weekly service between Nadi and San Francisco.
Via airlineroute.net, the service will operate between June 16 and August 14, 2016, with the following schedule:
FJ870 Nadi to San Francisco departing 9:00PM arriving 12:30PM
FJ871 San Francisco to Nadi departing 11:00PM arriving 5:00AM (+2 days)
The flight will be operated by an Airbus A330-200, featuring 24 business class seats and 249 economy class seats. Fiji Airways has an angled business class product, which looks quite a bit like Singapore Airlines’ regional A330 business class product. It looks fresh and “tropical,” though I doubt anyone is flying Fiji Airways because they have an industry leading hard product.
While they call this new route to San Francisco seasonal service, in reality they’re just operating under 20 flights in both directions. That’s still quite a bit of growth for the airline, given that they only have three Airbus A330s, which are their only planes capable of operating longhaul flights.
Keep in mind that Fiji Airways is an Alaska Airlines partner, so you can redeem Alaska miles to fly Fiji Airways between the US and South Pacific. You could book an award like Los Angeles to Nadi to Auckland, with a stopover in Nadi.
That’s a cool way to visit New Zealand. At just 55,000 miles one-way in business class, that’s quite an incredible deal as well.
Bottom line
I’d love to see more flights between the US and Fiji. Given what a small market it is, realistically I doubt we’ll see service from a US airline anytime soon. However, if Fiji Airways had the money to expand their fleet I think they could do quite well operating an Icelandair-style business model, whereby they’ll fly you between the US and Australia/New Zealand with a “free” stopover in Fiji. That could help their economy immensely.
But in the meantime I’m happy settling for their new flight to San Francisco, which at least gives Mileage Plan members another option for redeeming miles, even if it’s in the “southern” winter.
Would you like to see Fiji Airways add more flights to the US?
Any idea about the experience and quality of the pilots/mechanics?
Getting Fiji awards in the (US) summer season can be very difficult, btw
@Nick, it's regional base. So it's same 55K from either LAX or SFO. Or if you need a connection, you can also do SEA-SFO-NAN-AKL for all 55K.
@Lucky, the airline is taking delivery of their first 300 series A330 in 2016. This should give them more wiggle room in expanding their operations.
@Lucky: you're right. As a continental European I always struggle with the concept of a.m./p.m. Thought that 12:30 p.m. meant 00:30 which is nonsense of course.
The map shows them leaving out of LAX. Is it 55K miles one way from LAX or from SFO?
@Frank It's only at SFO for 10.5 hours, where did you get 22.5?
The schedule seems odd as the aicraft would be sitting idle in SFO for 22.5 hours...
@ Frank -- It's 10.5 hours by my math, which seems like the standard downtime for Fiji Airways planes, given the coordinated schedules.