While I got an incredible value out of my French Bee experience, I still hesitate to recommend it. Instead, I ended up with a poor man's business class - three seats all to myself. And I didn't get to experience the true horror of the 16-inch-wide seats thanks to the light load (234 passengers versus 376 economy seats). I was able to get myself and my checked bag from Tahiti to San Francisco with drinks, snacks and a meal for under $280 all-in. I went into this flight fully prepared for it to be the worst of the 430 economy flights that I've logged. And there were two universal power outlets for each set of three or four seats, under and between each seat. London Grammar's "Truth Is a Beautiful Thing" helped power me through writing this review.Įach seat had a USB outlet at the bottom of the IFE screen.
French bee tv#
In addition to the movies and TV shows, there were 32 albums from various genres. The TV shows weren't particularly well-suited for a flight, consisting of random clusters of episodes - such as episodes 4 through 6 of Season 4 of "Breaking Bad" and episodes 11 to 13 of Season 1 of "This Is Us." While this is useful if you just happen to leave off on the episode prior, it's not set up for binge watching. That actually worked in my favor, as I'd only seen two of the 32 ("Home Alone" and "Titanic").
However, don't plan on catching the latest and greatest that Hollywood has to offer, as the movies were mostly older selections. In total, the system was stocked with 32 movies and a total of 18 TV episodes from seven series.
Just make sure to line up at the entrance to the rental-car desks early, as the passengers on early-arriving and early-departing flights will likely be lined up. So if you rented a car - hopefully using AutoSlash to make the price cheaper than a round-trip taxi - you'll probably want to check in with French Bee first before returning your car to ensure you make the 5:30am check-in-counter cutoff. Note that the Papeete rental-car center doesn't open until 5am. That's less than the already reasonable $665 one-way that TPG's Zach Honig paid for his French Bee premium economy review flight. While I needed to review the economy cabin, between the cheap $252 fare and $240 buy-up, I could have scored a one-way premium economy flight for under $500 one-way. The check-in agent referred to a pricing chart and quoted me $240 for the walk-up upgrade. I also asked about the cost for upgrading to premium economy. I found this rather peculiar, as priority boarding was a component of multiple add-on packs. The agent checked his price list and then with a supervisor before telling me that priority boarding isn't available from Papeete.
French bee for free#
While I'll discuss the service in more detail in a separate post, I was able to book two one-way flights (PPT to SFO and SFO to ATL) through Kiwi for $473 total - including insurance that would rebook me for free if the French Bee flight arrived too late to make the United flight.Īfter being unsuccessful in purchasing priority boarding during online check-in, I inquired about it during counter check-in. Wary of both the operational performance of low-cost carriers and the high lodging costs in the Bay Area, I didn't want to risk booking two different tickets. The cheapest one-way ticket from Tahiti to Atlanta (ATL) was over $1,000 one-way. I checked around to price the trip from Tahiti to the East Coast. However, I needed to go farther than just San Francisco. One-way flights on French Bee cost as little as $200 one-way on this route. Thankfully, United and French Bee were in the midst of a price war between San Francisco (SFO) and Papeete, Tahiti (PPT). I booked a one-way AAdvantage award to get myself to Tahiti, and then needed a cheap one-way to get back to the US. So when I needed a cheap, one-way back from Tahiti, my curiosity - with maybe a tad of masochism - was too much to pass up the opportunity to check it out. Both of them are low-cost airlines based in France, and one of those airlines offers cheap flights between the US and Tahiti. There are only two airlines in the world that operate an Airbus A350 with 10-abreast seating.
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