We arrived at T4 JFK in plenty of time, and were amongst the first to check-in. Having had an upgrade on our first flight with VS, and this being a honeymoon heavy route, we didn't bother with asking about an upgrade again (even if they were doing them it was someone else's turn!).
Checked in and got seats A & C on row 22, which is about mid-way back in the first Y cabin on the A343. Grabbed some lunch before going through security about 1 hour before departure. Security was fairly quiet, and we were soon at the gate. Our aircraft was parked remotely, so the gate was close by.
Unfortunately, JFK airport is completely disorganised. Just as it was time to board, they decided to board another flight through the same gate (a Sun Country flight to MSP), and they delayed our boarding. About 15 mins later, we started boarding, even though the other flight was still boarding. We all went through the same door, and at the bottom of the escalator a man asked us which flight we were going on and pointed us to the relavent bus. A recipe for disaster, but it seemed to just about work.
Then the duty free wasn't there - they told us it would be delivered to us on the plane, which it eventually was.
As we got on board, we were given a Tiare flower (the flower of Tahiti) by the cabin crew. The cabin was well presented, but some of the seats were slightly worn. After a half hour queue to take off, we eventually got airborne around 1 hour late.
As tropical storm Ernesto was in the area, and there was another hurricane off Mexico, we took a slightly odd routing, going North West initially, then heading out over the Pacific at LA, before turning south towards Tahiti.
As for Air Tahiti Nui, they are a pretty good airline in Y, with good food, seats and cabin crew:
Seats: Comfortable (much more so than VS Y seats on their older A346), 32' leg room, which makes a big difference over 31' when you are over 6 foot like me. Some of them were slightly worn - my wife's seat had the seat pocket hanging forward which restricted her leg room. We managed to move to seats in front of each other after take off, as the plane was quite empty, so we had 2 seats each. I managed to sleep for around half of the flight, which is unusual for me.
Food: Excellent. I had fish with pasta in a cream sauce, and it was probably the best airline meal in Y I have ever had. The snack later on in the flight was a tomato/pasta bake which was also nice (although it meant I had pasta twice!). A nice touch was the distribution of menus at the start of the flight. Another helpful touch was the cabin crew going round the cabin with sandwiches during the flight. These were small, but were useful for mid way between the meals. These were also available in the galley if you wanted to go and get them yourself.
Cabin Crew: Good, circulated with water and drinks regularly.
IFE: Not great, the choice of 4 films was poor, and there were no other TV programmes to watch. The games were the same as those available on V:Port, and I spent most of my time watching the map!
Overall a good flight - the IFE could have been better, but the seat and food were as good as anything I have experienced before in Y.
We landed around 1.20am in Papeete (1.5 hours late, due mainly to JFK issues and longer flight routing). Disembarked to the tune of locals playing guitars, which told us we were deinitely in Tahiti. We were also presented with garlands around our necks. These were all nice touches, but after 13 hours in the air, I just wanted to go to bed! We were flying on to Moorea, the next day, so we transferred to our hotel, The Intercontinental Tahiti, a 10 min drive away and had a good few hours sleep.
