Aircalin is the airline of New Caledonia, part of Overseas France. New Caledonia has been dealing with some civil unrest in recent months, which has caused demand for travel to New Caledonia to drop sharply. As a result, Aircalin is reworking its route network, and is getting creative.
As I wrote about a few weeks ago, Aircalin is launching an interesting new route, which is already on sale. I wanted to provide an update, as the airline has now started letting people book flights on the individual sectors, which makes for a unique way to fly between Paris and Bangkok.
In this post:
Aircalin plans Noumea to Bangkok to Paris flights
Aircalin plans to launch flights between Noumea (NOU) and Paris (CDG) in the coming months. Specifically, the twice weekly service will launch as of December 11, 2024, and will feature a stop in Bangkok (BKK). The route will operate with the following schedule, with departures in both directions on on Wednesdays and Saturdays:
SB500 Noumea to Bangkok departing 1:45AM arriving 7:55AM
SB500 Bangkok to Paris departing 9:55AM arriving 5:25PM
SB501 Paris to Bangkok departing 8:30PM arriving 2:40PM (+1 day)
SB501 Bangkok to Noumea departing 4:40PM arriving 6:30AM (+1 day)
The 10,949-mile journey is blocked at 25hr40min westbound and 24hr eastbound, including the stop in Bangkok. Aircalin has secured pick-up rights in Bangkok, meaning that passengers can fly the airline exclusively between Paris and Bangkok, between Bangkok and Noumea, or the entire way. Technically the Paris to Bangkok flight wouldn’t be considered a fifth freedom flight, since New Caledonia is part of France.
The flight will be operated by an Airbus A330-900neo, featuring 291 seats. That’s comprised of 26 business class seats, 21 premium economy seats, and 244 economy seats.
So, why is Aircalin choosing to fly to Paris now? Tourism to New Caledonia has plummeted, so the airline has reduced service for many of its Asia destinations, including cutting most flights to Japan. With a decrease in tourism, the airline is instead trying to find ways to generate revenue, and demand between Paris and Noumea remains strong, given the ties, including people wanting to visit family and friends.
Aircalin has a close partnership with Air France, and up until now, the airline has sold tickets between Noumea and Paris with one segment on Aircalin, and one segment on Air France. But now Aircalin plans to operate the entire service itself.
Aircalin has had to put staff on unpaid leave and has been doing horribly financially, but the airline hopes that this new Paris service will reverse that trend, and get the carrier to 80-90% of its previous revenue.
For context on the demand in this market, roughly 65,000 people flew between Noumea and Paris in 2023. For the carrier’s new service, the hope is that 43,000 people will travel on this flight in 2025. If my math is correct, based on 104 roundtrip flights in a year and the jet’s capacity for 291 passengers, that means 43,000 of 60,528 seats would be full, so that’s a load factor of just over 70%.
It’s possible to redeem Air France-KLM Flying Blue miles for this service, and award availability is excellent. For the entire journey, I see one-way economy awards priced at 60,000 miles, while business class costs 150,000 miles. I don’t currently see any award availability on the individual sectors, but I imagine that will change (and I’d sure love to fly with Aircalin between Paris and Bangkok!).
Aircalin wants to eventually fly nonstop to Paris
It’s interesting to note that Aircalin has had aspirations of flying nonstop between Noumea and Paris for several years. Back when the airline took delivery of its pair of Airbus A330-900neos, the airline stated that it still wanted to acquire either Airbus A350s or Boeing 787s, to be able to fly nonstop between Noumea and Paris.
The current unrest is causing this service to launch earlier than initially planned, and with a stop. However, the airline is still aiming for nonstop flights in the future.
Now, I’ve gotta say, I’m a little skeptical of how exactly Aircalin plans to make those nonstop flights work. The nonstop distance between Noumea and Paris is 10,366 miles. The length of that flight is roughly on par with Qantas’ planned “Project Sunrise” flights, from Sydney and Melbourne to New York and London. The airline plans to use very spaciously configured Airbus A350-1000s with extra fuel tanks for this service.
The concept of something like this seems a bit more questionable for an airline like Aircalin:
- It seems like the A350-1000 might be “too much plane” for an airline like Aircalin
- Qantas can made this service work due to the high premium cabin demand, including for first and business class; however, Aircalin’s service would be more leisure oriented, so it would be hard to make those yields work
- Presumably cargo would also be significant between Paris and Noumea, and a jet couldn’t carry much cargo when flying that distance nonstop
So personally I’m pretty skeptical as to whether or not we’ll ever see this as a nonstop route. It just doesn’t seem realistic, in terms of economics.
Bottom line
As of December 2024, Aircalin plans to launch twice weekly flights from Noumea to Paris via Bangkok. The service will be operated using Airbus A330-900neos, and this will be quite a long journey, at 10,000+ miles. The airline will even have pick-up rights in Bangkok, meaning you could fly with the airline exclusively between Paris and Bangkok, if you’d like.
Aircalin is ultimately making the best of its current situation, given the unrest in New Caledonia. Tourism demand is way down, but demand between Overseas France and Metropolitan France remains strong. So while I’m not sure this service will be profitable, it’ll likely lose less money than whatever else Aircalin could do with these planes.
Aircalin still hopes to operate this as a nonstop route at some point in the future, but that seems challenging.
What do you make of Aircalin adding Paris flights?
I can wait to see Aircalin fly to Bangkok and Paris.
Here is a catch
Noumea to Bangkok
The first flight will take 9hr and 50 mins
Bangkok to Paris
The second flight will take 12 hrs and 35 mins
It will be the same flight time to head back to Bangkok and Noumea. The journey will take 26 hours on a Airbus A330-900neo. It might be tough for Aircalin but I think it can do it.
SB is wholly unrealistic in its pricing strategy - I just picked random dates in January for BKK-CDG-BKK to see if they would be worth considering to Europe. Business class return for 15 Jan - 25 Jan is USD4,481! AY flies the route via HEL for USD2,100 (albeit basic business), and AF direct for USD2,676. QR is USD2,786. EK is USD3,231. And KL and LH are somewhere between QR and EK pricing.....as you can see,...
SB is wholly unrealistic in its pricing strategy - I just picked random dates in January for BKK-CDG-BKK to see if they would be worth considering to Europe. Business class return for 15 Jan - 25 Jan is USD4,481! AY flies the route via HEL for USD2,100 (albeit basic business), and AF direct for USD2,676. QR is USD2,786. EK is USD3,231. And KL and LH are somewhere between QR and EK pricing.....as you can see, SB is the MOST expensive way to fly between Thailand and France, so if I were them I'd get back to the drawing board.
Yes, Paris is always a strong destination from the French colonies. France is the last big colonial power in the world, meaning the French live in some sort of parallel universe compared to the rest of us.
Now an A350-900URL would actually meet their demands of covering the 10.366 miles between Paris and New Caledonia, as its operating range is 11.163 miles. The question is whether this will be sufficient, though, as it seems...
Yes, Paris is always a strong destination from the French colonies. France is the last big colonial power in the world, meaning the French live in some sort of parallel universe compared to the rest of us.
Now an A350-900URL would actually meet their demands of covering the 10.366 miles between Paris and New Caledonia, as its operating range is 11.163 miles. The question is whether this will be sufficient, though, as it seems that the nearest diversion airports would either be Brisbane or Fiji if landing in Noumea is impossible for whatever reason (civil unrest, bed weather, who knows?). One option would be to ask Airbus to look into an even more extended fuel tank option, another option would, given the expected demand, be a less dense configuration, resulting in a reduced payload and thus a possibly extended range. A more spacious experience would definitely be a reason for me to seriously consider them between Paris and Bangkok. Just a thought, though.
Instantly realizing my brainfart as the Paris-Bangkok leg will thus disappear when flying direct flights. Oh well...
Does this mean they've reduced or stopped flights to and from Singapore?
Going from 4x to 3x weekly
https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/241011-sb1q25sin
Would it be 5th freedom? Isn’t it just France-BKK roundtrip? Just like flying a W route?
New Caledonia is considered as France, so it isn’t
New caledonia is part of france
The elephant in the room is geopolitical factors. I think if you stick with the 1990s mindset of open skies, the market is everything, the end of history, this move makes no sense. But in the current context of a new Cold War and New Caledonia’s strategic importance to France and how critical it is to maintain an unhindered air transport link between Paris and France’s Pacific territories for France itself, it’s another story.
Well technically the New Caledonia, Wallis and Fatuna and French Polynesia are overseas territories, just like Grand Cayman or BVI to UK. Now Guadalupe/Martinique Mayotte and Reunion are considered overseas departments which is the same status of any region in Metropolitan France.
Now St Pierre and Miquelon is just an overseas collective given it’s about 5K people
I will say that the new Intercontinental in Noumea has me intrigued though
I flew SB J class SIN-NOU in March, the Biz Cabin needs a refresh: Lie-Flats not so comfortable, outdated.
Unrelated, but another noteworthy newsbreak is a new order of 85 Airbus aircraft from Air India, which hasn’t received a lot of attention given that the airline’s legendary owner Ratan Tata passed away some days back. Hopefully this is covered.
Aircalin is a great airline, but heaven help you if you need help with anything, and good luck in getting their attention if you need a refund. I had a booking SYD-NOU-SIN last July; flights were cancelled due to the unrest in New Caledonia. No SB office could help me - not in SYD, not in the US, nobody. They wanted a form filled out with a SWIFT code, OR a SWIFT *and* IBAN code,...
Aircalin is a great airline, but heaven help you if you need help with anything, and good luck in getting their attention if you need a refund. I had a booking SYD-NOU-SIN last July; flights were cancelled due to the unrest in New Caledonia. No SB office could help me - not in SYD, not in the US, nobody. They wanted a form filled out with a SWIFT code, OR a SWIFT *and* IBAN code, none of which are relevant for credit unions in the USA.
I finally called Amex. to intercede on my behalf; while it was too late to dispute the charge, they opened a case and SB didn't argue about it and I got the refund finally, but it was a PITA process.