Private Jet Calama to Bora Bora

Calama and Bora Bora lie some 4,649 nautical miles apart, a distance suited to a heavy business jet such as a Gulfstream G550 or Bombardier Global 6000, both offering the range to complete the crossing directly while cruising near 45,000 feet with comfortable reserves in hand. This high desert Chilean town, best known internationally as the gateway to the Atacama Desert’s copper mines and its otherworldly stargazing plains, is served by El Loa International Airport, a small but capable field used to handling private charters for travellers moving between the mines and the coast. From the arid plateau of northern Chile the route runs almost due west, crossing thousands of miles of open South Pacific before descending toward Fa’a’ā International Airport at Papeete, French Polynesia’s point of entry, ahead of a short onward transfer to Bora Bora and its lagoon-side villages. The contrast between departure and arrival is about as complete as private aviation offers: one of the driest places on earth giving way to a lush volcanic island ringed by a coral barrier reef, its lagoon watched over by the jagged peak of Mount Otemanu and populated by manta rays and reef sharks easily seen from overwater bungalows. This pairing tends to suit travellers combining a stay in the Atacama, with its salt flats and clear night skies, with an entirely different kind of remoteness in French Polynesia, trading altitude and dust for warm, shallow water and slow tropical evenings, a genuine study in contrasts for those building a longer South American and Pacific itinerary rather than a single-destination trip. Crews flying this sector often note how few other aircraft share the airway across this remote stretch of the South Pacific.