At 6000km away from Sydney, it’s 2000km closer to us than Hawaii, which is serviced regularly by several airlines non-stop. Yet the only way for Australians to reach Tahiti is with a frustrating layover and a change of plane in Auckland.
The distance covered is around the same, but fussing between planes in New Zealand adds both hours and irritation to what could be, in theory, a very straightforward flight, and help open up the stunningly beautiful French Polynesia to more Australian holidaymakers.
In fact, both Qantas and the now defunct French airline UTA did once fly direct from Australia to Tahiti. But over time, like so many flight routes both here and round the world, it fell out of service.
Sitting down with a map of the world and looking at which countries are within coo-ee of Australia, and comparing them to where airlines actually fly, can be a depressing exercise. Why, for example, can’t people fly directly from Perth to India? Why are so few European destinations available to Australian travellers without a bunch of stops or jumping around between carriers in the Middle East or Asia?
If you want to fly somewhere off beat from Australia, more often than not you’ll need to stopover in Singapore, the Middle East, or LAX.
Did you know that Qantas once flew passengers from Australia to destinations as far-flung as Belgrade, Beirut and Acapulco (that last one via Tahiti – what a beach bonanza that trip must have been!)? Now planning a holiday to any of those places is like playing a giant game of Transport Tetris.
By contrast, if you look at a map of Europe, practically anyone in any city can reach any of their neighbours without a hiccup. Have some urgent need to fly between Linz, Austria and the island of Crete? You can do that. Need to dash from Nottingham in England to Carcassonne in France? Not a problem.
There’s no single answer to why Australians seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to long haul flights except to say that, as with most things, it comes down to economics. Our location at the bottom of the world means that overseas airlines that ‘hub’ in Asia or the Middle East, often can’t find competitive reasons to send aircraft further south to us. Then there’s the idea of two-way tourism.
Now, how do we convince those living in paradise to fly to Australia in their droves?
Flights aren’t just about getting Australians off to nice holidays in other parts of the world. Government stakeholders such as Tourism Australia also want to maximise the number of visitors into our country where they can spend money and boost our economy. Chinese tourists are a big inbound market for Australia. French Polynesians? Not so much.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. For starters, as much as I whinged about my NZ layover on my Tahiti flight, one of the upshots to airlines reducing their routes to be more economically viable is that flights these days are for the most part cheaper for all of us (even if it may not always seem that way). “Flight costs have come down dramatically,” says aviation expert Neil Hansford. “Once upon a time flying Sydney to Perth would have cost you well over $1000. Now you see people going $300 each way.”
There’s also a bit of encouraging movement on the flight path front, and more destinations are set to become part of Australians’ flight diet. Qantas’s extravagantly-named ‘Project Sunrise’ is the big one. It’s already introduced seasonal non-stop flights between Perth and Rome, and will soon fly to New York with a stop in Auckland (plus outgoing CEO Alan Joyce suggested Paris may be on the cards sometime soon). Virgin is also about to start flights between Cairns and Tokyo, as well as the Gold Coast to Denpasar.
Could Project Sunrise be the answer? For a number of routes, quite possibly.
And if you decide to holiday here this year, new player Bonza is making some sexy moves between underserved domestic routes: for the first time, passengers can fly non-stop between Melbourne and Gladstone or from the Sunshine Coast to Prosperine, a gateway to the Whitsundays.
Australians love to travel, and I can’t imagine a time that the odd layover or other inconvenience will slow down our love of exploring the world. On that note, suck up the stop and go to Tahiti. That diamond-sparkling water and spectacular underwater wildlife are worth a few bored hours in Auckland airport any day of the week.