A turboprop built for 45-minute island hops is currently taking the scenic route — very scenic — to its new home. Air Tahiti's freshly delivered ATR 72-600, registered F-OPFO and named ʻĀnapanapa, left France in mid-October on an eight-flight ferry journey to Tahiti that hops through Egypt, Oman, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and Fiji over roughly six days.

The aircraft departed from Toulouse-Francazal, the smaller general aviation field rather than the city's main commercial airport. Its first leg to Cairo took 6 hours 30 minutes; the second, to Muscat in Oman, ran 6 hours 33 minutes. That's over 13 hours aloft before the plane had even reached India. From there the plan calls for stops at Hyderabad, Subang (the secondary airport serving Kuala Lumpur), Lombok in Indonesia, Cairns in Australia and Nadi in Fiji, before the final landing at Tahiti-Faa'a.

Why the marathon? The ATR 72 is a regional turboprop with a published range of about 740 nautical miles at full passenger load — it simply cannot cross oceans nonstop. Delivery flights work differently from scheduled service, though: with no paying payload, special fuel arrangements and favourable conditions, the plane can push much further per sector, allowing these long over-water legs. Each stop breaks the trip into manageable chunks and provides refuelling and support. Even so, the route remains subject to weather and operational changes, and the six-day schedule could stretch.

What makes this plane worth following once it arrives is its cabin: it will operate in an all-business class configuration with 26 seats, serving short routes between French Polynesian islands. In other words, a very comfortable seat on the hop to Bora Bora. First, though, it has to lumber across most of the planet — a throwback to the multi-stop itineraries of 1940s flying-boat travel, when reaching the Pacific meant a string of overnight stops rather than one nonstop haul.

For travellers, the story is a fun piece of aviation trivia with a practical payoff: those inter-island flights around Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora are about to get roomier. Anyone planning a French Polynesia trip will likely end up on an ATR at some point, since the islands' short runways rule out jets. Watching this delivery flight unfold — trackable on Flightradar24 — is a nice reminder of how much logistics sit behind a 20-minute flight over a turquoise lagoon.