Landing/Departing in Papeete for Cruise

[gdlamberth]

Just curious about anyone's recent (last 2 months or so) experience landing or departing Fa'a Airport at various times (early morning or late evening) and processing through COVID Screening, immigration, recovering/checking baggage etc.   Particularly interested in duration from flight landing to leaving airport or how early to arrive for various departure times.  I know Trip Advisor has a long thread on this but nothing since late August.

Thanks,

Greg

[castriker888]

We landed October 19 on the United flight from SFO, around 6:50 pm. Lines were very long to pick up entry Covid test kits and get through immigration. The actual Covid testing was fast as they only needed to take the sample rather than wait for the results. We were in the second to last row so we were near the end of the line (and it wasn't moving at all at first), but periodically, they would call out folks from the line to go into a separate line which shortened the wait. Not sure what criteria they used, but we guessed they chose the oldest looking folks. Still, it probably took 60-90 minutes to get out. Bags had been offloaded by the time we got to the carousel.

 

On the way back, 9 days later, we had the evening United flight back to SFO departing 9:15 pm. We got to the airport around 5 pm, and check-in began around 5:45 pm. Security/Immigration didn't open till around 6:30 pm, by which time there was a long line waiting to go through. There were separate lines for the United flight vs. the Air Tahiti Nui flight which was to depart at 9:30 pm. However, many people didn't realize that there were actually two lines, which meant they waited longer than they needed to as the United line was let through first.

[Petoonya]

@castriker888

How was your cruise/trip?

[gdlamberth]

14 hours ago, Petoonya said:

@castriker888

How was your cruise/trip?

+1