Good evening everybody from sunny or cloudy Los Angeles! 🌴📸 I have been here since noon after arriving from Miami 🏝️😎 on an American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER the report about that flight is already up so be sure to check the 1st part out before this post but anyways I had a 12 hour layover here before my next flight to Nadi, Fiji 🇫🇯 on the Fijian flag carrier, Fiji Airways on their flagship aircraft the Airbus A350-900 and I’m definitely excited not only to see what the islands have to offer but also to see how Fiji Airways long haul economy class product will compare to other carriers I’ve flown with in economy. I had spend most of my layover simply driving around LA 🌴📸 and hitting up the Santa Monica pier for the last few hours before returning to LAX to catch this flight, Fiji Airways like every single foreign carrier at this airport (except for a few airlines) uses the beautiful Tom Bradley International Terminal or TBIT. This is not my first time here as I was last year since my AA flight back to MIA from me and my friends transcontinental flagship first trip departed from here but this will be my 1st time leaving here properly, on an international carrier to a international destination that is. TBIT has 2 sections, the main terminal and the satellite, the main section has all the 100 gates and the satellite has all the 200 gates. My flight will be out of the satellite terminal more specifically gate 202 so that means going through an underground tunnel under the taxiway and as this is the TBIT, who knows what could be above me right now. I quickly went to a convenience store to get some light snacks and a water bottle as this will be a pretty long flight before I made my way to the gate.
FLIGHT INFO
Origin: Los Angeles Intl 🇺🇸 (KLAX)
Destination: Nadi Intl 🇫🇯 (NFFN)
Flight Time: 10:08
Airbus A350-900 (Fiji Airways)
Server: Expert
Taking me across the pacific will be DQ-FAN a 5 year old Airbus A350-900 originally delivered to Hong Kong Airlines in December 2018 but never flew for them, then in August 2019 it was transferred to Hainan Airlines who once again never flew it and it was stored until June 2023 when Airbus took it back and finally in August that same year, Fiji Airways took it over and it’s been with them ever since. So this plane definitely has quite the history but how will the interior be as it’s been with 3 airlines (Airbus not included) let’s find out by boarding this bird!
Fiji Airways has 334 seats on their Airbus A359, 33 business class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration with the last 2 in the center actually being kinda in the galley which is quite odd but okay I guess. After that are the remaining 301 economy seats in the traditional 3-3-3 configuration. My seat for this 10 hour journey will be 56K in the rear economy class section. Waiting for me was the traditional blanket and pillow surprisingly no water bottle which I did expect as most carriers do this for their overnight flights even US airlines do this. I wasn’t able to get a full row to myself but I at least got an empty middle seat so all I needed to do was disturb one person when I needed to get up so that’s a good thing. Boarding was completed very quickly and we wasted no time in pushing back and beginning our taxi to LAXs runway 25R for take off!
Our take off roll was also pretty much straight forward and without delay, we were airborne!
Here is our last view of Los Angeles 🌴📸 and the USA 🇺🇸 as we continue our 10 hour journey completely over the pacific to Fiji! 🇫🇯
Once we reached our cruising altitude of FL360, the crew wasted to no in preparing dinner and I went with the chicken option but there was a vegetarian option as well, my chicken was served with rice, side salad 🥗 warm bread roll with butter, and some crackers with cheese. The chicken was surprisingly the best I’ve ever had on a plane, chicken or just meats in general is very tough to perfect up in the sky but the crew for this flight actually made it shine! And speaking of the crew, they were all great, very attentive over us, social and overall just seemed to be happy with their jobs so 5 stars here ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I am getting pretty tired right now so I’m gonna take a quick 3 hour nap simply because I want to catch a very cool moment with these transpacific flights so see you in like 3 hours or so.
It’s only been 5 hours into flight but I work up at the perfect time to catch us passing the international date line, this invisible line is the border of calendar days crossing it to the west like us will advance the clock by 24 hours but crossing east will subtract a day so despite us departing LAX on a Friday night and only flying for 10 hours we actually land in NAN on Sunday Morning here is how it goes, we take off and fly a bit so it passes midnight so it’s Saturday and then we cross the date line making it Sunday all at the SAME time. So if its 3:00am by the time you cross, it will still be 3:00am but just the next day. And crossing east has the reverse effect I’ll explain it more on my return flight to LAX. But after that phenomenon I hit the hay again.
As a typical overnight flight tradition, galley noises woke me up meaning that breakfast was coming up and sure enough it was served, it was a fruit plate with a cold croissants 🥐 with butter once again and a beverage of choice I asked for a coffee but also a water bottle and she gave me both and of course the water bottle was a Fiji one. 😂 the breakfast while not the biggest and the best I’ve ever had still got the job done and it was very refreshing especially with the Fiji water alongside it. As we begin our descent the IFE is the last thing we need to check out, it’s pretty much what every airline offers, a decent selection of movies, TV shows, music, games and an inflight map pretty typical but as this is an A350, it also included exterior camera shots including this tail one which I am absolutely IN LOVE with 😍 it lets me see our surroundings even if I wouldn’t be able to see them out the window with the island of Viti Levu, home to Nadi and the nations capital, Suva as we also fly alongside RWY 02s left downwind leg.
As we are on final for RWY 02, I’d like to say that Fiji Airways is planning expanding their US 🇺🇸 operations, currently they offer Honolulu, Hawaii 🏝️🐢🌺 San Francisco 🌉 and Los Angeles 🌴📸 but they are planning to add Dallas DFW to the mix as they are members of the one world alliance and this will put them much closer to American Airlines as we all know DFW is AAs primary hub and they connect to many more places that LAX doesn’t serve. They even fly to Vancouver, Canada 🇨🇦 just to compliment the rest of these North American services.
TOUCHDOWN! Welcome to Nadi, Fiji 🇫🇯 everybody! Now how did FJ do? well they did really good, planes were clean, seats were comfortable, crew were friendly, meals were great and the IFE was amazing especially the exterior cameras there a want anything bad to report on except maybe add a water bottle to each passengers seat upon boarding but it it’s truly a small thing so it doesn’t really matter a lot and yes I would definitely fly them again if I ever find myself down here in Oceania again!
After an extremely short taxi, we were soon at our gate and Nadi’s airport has small open air sections between the jet bridges leading to the planes and the actual gate area inside which I found extremely cool, literally. Passport control 🛂 took a little bit as the Vancouver flight and another FJ flight from Brisbane, Australia 🇦🇺 were ahead of us but we still got through in like 15 minutes, bags didn’t take terribly long either and I was soon off to my Airbnb I had rented, drop my things off and pretty much explore the island and see what it has to offer. That’s it regarding my flight from Los Angeles 🌴📸 to Nadi, Fiji 🇫🇯 on the Fiji Airways Airbus A350-900 stay tuned for the return bag home the following Sunday and some IRL stuff soon after and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋