Ask the pilot

Why the biggest airplane ever is not such a huge deal, really. Also, great news for New York-Lagos commuters.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Airplanes, Airlines, Business, Airports, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Jan. 21, 2005 | Jane McGonigal, writing from Berkeley, Calif., was first to solve last month's semi-Google-proof airport riddle. Tahiti-Faaa International, serving Papeete, Tahiti, is the airport whose name repeats three of the very same letter in succession. (As you can see, my hint that Googlers should start from the back of the alphabet was a ruse.)

I'm uncertain of the pronunciation, but technically the spelling is Faa'a, the apostrophe implying a syllabic burp. So it would seem, though at least one guide to Austronesian pronunciations leaves things unclear: "It's quite common for two or three vowels to be grouped together," the guide explains. "In this case, each vowel would be a separate syllable and would be clearly pronounced. The only difficult part is the glottal catch."

So, apparently all three letter A's are given their due, and there's something called a "glottal catch," which I'm told is similar to the sound one makes when coughing up a fish bone.

I spent a night at Faa'a once. It was June 1986, just after my 20th birthday. Stopping in Tahiti on the return from Sydney, Australia, I promptly ran out of money and was forced to sleep in the airport. In front of the terminal, beneath a cluster of sad-looking palms, I managed to spread out an orange blanket -- stolen from a Qantas plane three days earlier -- and get some rest. Be assured that the caramel-skinned, flower-bearing beauty seen here is not among the characters you'll encounter skulking around the Faa'a parking lot at 3 a.m.

Or anywhere else on Tahiti, for that matter. At least in the noisy capital, Papeete. The largest and most populous of the Society Islands, Tahiti is the region's business hub and hardly the verdant dreamscape you might envision. For that, vacationers head to outlying idylls like Bora Bora and Moorea.

In those days, if you didn't fly Qantas to Tahiti it was probably the old UTA. That's Union des Transports Aériens, the fabled French airline specializing in routes to the more far-flung of Gallic territories and ex-colonies. Later that morning in '86, half-asleep on a Faa'a airport observation deck, I watched one of UTA's blue and white DC-10s push from the gate, bound for Los Angeles and Paris. (Check the globe: If Tahiti-LAX-Paris sounds bizarrely roundabout, remember our earlier "great circle" discussion.) UTA would eventually merge with Air France.

Nowadays Tahiti has its own hometown airline, Air Tahiti Nui. Though presently in possession of only four aircraft, the carrier has distinguished itself with friendly staff and in-flight pampering of growing renown. In July 2005, Air Tahiti Nui is planning to launch flights between Papeete and JFK International. This will be the first-ever nonstop between New York and the South Pacific, and one of the longest flights in the world.

Speaking of which:

You might recall it was just about a year ago that we were all abuzz over Singapore Airlines' commencement of Los Angeles-Singapore nonstops. Inauguration of the 18-hour, 7,600-nautical-mile megahaul was celebrated in a column last February. A few months too soon, perhaps. Never one to rest on its laurels, Singapore shattered its own record by unveiling a Newark-Singapore route in summer 2004. Both pairings take advantage of the ultralong legs of the Airbus A340-500, which the carrier nicknames the "A345." Newark-Singapore stands as the world's longest-ever scheduled commercial flight and is likely to hold the crown for some time, perhaps until somebody is bold enough to announce the once unimaginable, now inevitable New York-Sydney run.

We're not quite there yet, technologically. While the A340-500 has the longest endurance of any existing jetliner, Boeing's 777-200LR, set to launch with Pakistan International and Taiwan's Eva Air in 2006, will trump the Airbus by a thousand miles or so, able to connect virtually every major city pair on earth.

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