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.
While I first wrote about this yesterday, I wanted to provide an update. This flight is now on sale, so we now have a sense of what the schedule for the route will look like.
In this post:
Aircalin plans Noumea to Bangkok to Paris flights
Aircalin has announced 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 refueling stop in Bangkok (BKK). The route will operate with the following schedule 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 refueling stop Initially Aircalin won’t have pick-up rights in Bangkok, and all passengers will remain onboard during that stop. That’s expected to change in the future, as Aircalin is hoping to be able to sell seats for either sector.
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 cultural 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. I see one-way economy awards priced at 60,000 miles, while business class costs 150,000 miles.
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.
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?
Why is the stop in BKK 2 hours each way? No way it would take that long to refill an A330...
Likely they want to keep the same schedule when they allow CDG-BKK and BKK-NOU bookings, and a full turnaround happens on the ground
Just so you all know nouvelle Caledonia is a departement of France....... they treat it as part of France and that has certain quirks about the cost of services..... and I bet the French government is in on making sure thete is a continuous airbridge
Good luck if you need to get a refund from Aircalin. Months and months of being "jacked" around, being told blatant lies and continuing requests for the same info. I'd walk to Noumea from Australia before I bought a ticket from them.
They should have built on their existing Noumea-Singapore service and added Paris from Singapore. I don't know if there's much of a market from Bangkok to Paris.
Singapore seems like a better choice to me, too. They're already established at Changi, an airport that services a small island full of wealthy people who love to travel and do so frequently.
I don't know if this idea is crazy but do you think if it would make sense for any French airline (like Aircalin, Air France or Air Tahiti Nui) to do open to operate a flight connecting multiple Overseas territories, allowing to fly without passport if flying with a French passport.
I'm thinking of something like NOU-PPT-SXM-CDG or NOU-RUN-CDG
Will they be selling just the CDG-BKK route? If so, could make for an interesting review opportunity, Lucky.
@Lucky...attributing the demand between Nouvelle Caledonie and France as due to "strong cultural ties" feels like a complete white washing of the history between these two places. France was a colonizing European power; they murdered and enslaved countless numbers of Indigenous Peoples and tried to force them into Christianity after England did the same (but left once the Indigenous Peoples had had enough and decided to push back an American ship in the mid-19th Century...
@Lucky...attributing the demand between Nouvelle Caledonie and France as due to "strong cultural ties" feels like a complete white washing of the history between these two places. France was a colonizing European power; they murdered and enslaved countless numbers of Indigenous Peoples and tried to force them into Christianity after England did the same (but left once the Indigenous Peoples had had enough and decided to push back an American ship in the mid-19th Century - they killed and cannibalized the crew). France used NC as a penal colony while excluding its Indigenous Peoples from all the profits of the mining, lumbering, and other theft they pursued; the Kanak Peoples - among others - are still paying the price for France's actions, just like many other "outre mer" peoples and former colonies are to this day.
Boohoo
Oooh. Sounds just like what Americans did to American Indians…
It's exactly what's happened throughout the whole of human history. It's nothing exceptional. The difference is that most of us have figured-out that it's not the way we want the world to work anymore - unless you're Russian, of course, in which case it's business as usual.
Whining and hand-wringing about colonialism won't change the past. It's pointless and pathetic to keep doing so.
The problem is many colonialist countries are still exploiting the countries they occupied/occupy.
@Pete so we should...whitewash the past? Pretend the atrocities of the past never happened? If you think my comment is "whining and hand-wringing," perhaps that says more about you (and the privilege you are bringing to this space) than the facts of the past.
With only 2 A330neo airframes in the fleet, is Air Calin going to drop their existing NOU-SIN route when they launch this new CDG via BKK route? If not, they're gonna be stretched really thin with practically no spare airframe to operate both routes. Wouldn't it be better for AirCalin to actually increase the SIN flying to, say, 4x weekly and codeshare with AF for the CDG-SIN vv sector. They'll incur less costs this way...
With only 2 A330neo airframes in the fleet, is Air Calin going to drop their existing NOU-SIN route when they launch this new CDG via BKK route? If not, they're gonna be stretched really thin with practically no spare airframe to operate both routes. Wouldn't it be better for AirCalin to actually increase the SIN flying to, say, 4x weekly and codeshare with AF for the CDG-SIN vv sector. They'll incur less costs this way (as they don't have to have a relief crew base in BKK, for one) while achieving much of their main objective. Additionally, I don't think securing traffic rights between CDG and BKK will help much as the route is mostly low yield with intense competition from myriad carriers
Agree with increasing SIN flying. The added benefit is these flights can serve both the Asia market and the France market. Having no stopover rights on BKK-NOU means effectively giving up the entirety of the Asia market if they have to cut the SIN route
@daneagles Yup, absolutely.
Sure it was historically nasty and wrong, but hell, how's that any difference between the British and what would become the USA? Stolen land, genocide against the first inhabitants..... and now two interconnected world powers.
What do you see different here?
@ImmortalSynn...who said what France did was any different than what other colonizing nations have done? The point I made was that calling the connection between France and NC "cultural" is problematic - it whitewashes the violence France perpetuated, just like centuries of history books and many American/British versions of what happened to the Indigenous Peoples of what is today North America have done...or what the Dutch did in what is today Indonesia...or what the Belgians...
@ImmortalSynn...who said what France did was any different than what other colonizing nations have done? The point I made was that calling the connection between France and NC "cultural" is problematic - it whitewashes the violence France perpetuated, just like centuries of history books and many American/British versions of what happened to the Indigenous Peoples of what is today North America have done...or what the Dutch did in what is today Indonesia...or what the Belgians did in Africa...we could go on and on. But this article was about France and NC.
My understanding is that the human race successfully completed a 100% actual genocide against the Neanderthals back in time. Knowing this, how can you sleep at night? As others have said, this has happened for all of history when a more technically and socially advanced society conflicted with another. Just hope aliens aren't real, as you know what will be in store for us humans if they find us first.
@jcil sure, let's just whitewash all of history. That'll help us understand how and why genocides, tyrannies, and authoritarian societies have come to happen or be, and we wouldn't want to learn anything from that now would we?
Even though you may not like it, there are significant cultural ties between France and New Caledonia (I note you chose to refer to the country by its French name rather than as Kanaky). The Kanaks are a minority in the territory and the substantial European population (not a majority either) are for the most part culturally French. There are also governmental and military links that generate passenger traffic to and from Metropolitan France. Whether...
Even though you may not like it, there are significant cultural ties between France and New Caledonia (I note you chose to refer to the country by its French name rather than as Kanaky). The Kanaks are a minority in the territory and the substantial European population (not a majority either) are for the most part culturally French. There are also governmental and military links that generate passenger traffic to and from Metropolitan France. Whether that is enough to support the planned Aircalin flight is a separate question.
The Kanaks were the majority before the French got there...they are now a minority on their land, which was stolen. We know this. But, as the author of this article is referring to the land by what Anglo/French folks refer to it as, that's what I referred to it as. So...what was your point? To defend colonialism? To comment on what I like or may not like? Because my comment wasn't about me, to be clear...
I hope it works out for them, it sounds like a rough time given the unrest. But 22-26 hours on an A330neo does not sound fun. I'd probably fly the ME3 or something nicer to one of their transfer airports like SIN, rest a bit, then fly them SIN-NOU
"But 22-26 hours on an A330neo does not sound fun"
As opposed to what other aircraft?
As opposed to having a longer layover and breaking up the flights. Also pretty sure food, seats, IFE, etc would be better taking the ME3 or something similar for part of the route
Which of the ME3 flies to NOU?
Aaah…none
Klaus_S, did you not read the top comment?
The 'their' referred there in the original comment is Aircalin. I'd have to fly the last leg on Aircalin from SIN-NOU, but wouldn't be trapped on the airline without the opportunity to take a break from the trip at a stopover points
"Klaus_S, did you not read the top comment?"
It's always embarrassing for the person who tries to condescend, and then realizes after the fact that they didn't bother to actually read the whole comment before they post. Now Klaus_S has egg all over his face. LOL!
There is simply no way I wouldn't want to disrmbark at the intermediate point, even if flying Business, on a route of that length.