Aircalin’s Intriguing Noumea To Paris A330neo Flights, Via Bangkok

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.

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?