Round-the-World Flights

"Air France Inaugurates a Pacific Ocean Link for its "Tour du Monde"

Page 6qq (rev: 1000)

B-707 Plane	Nuclear Test	Flown Cover	Tokyo-Papeete-Lima	Papeete-Tokyo

	France was the fourth nation to join the nuclear club when it successfully detonated 
a large nuclear device in Algeria in 1960.  France had developed nuclear weapons to serve 
as a nuclear deterrent independent of the US, UK and the Soviet Union.  Since 1960 France 
has conducted 210 nuclear tests at two locations.  Algeria was first selected in 1958 and 
the uninhabited atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in the South Pacific in 1966. France 
named these South Pacific atoll tests, CEP (Centre d'Experimentation du Pacifique) 
developing the necessary infrastructure to support its nuclear testing program in these 
Polynesian Islands.  

	In 1973 Air France saw this as an opportunity to inaugurate transpacific B-707 flight 
service from Tokyo Japan to Lima Peru via Papeete Tahiti, the largest of the French 
Polynesian Islands.  With advances to the B-707 and adding Tokyo and Lima to Air France's 
world-wide jet route network, Air France enhanced its "tour du monde" round-the-world 
flight services that it first introduced in 1961.

Itinerary:                              East            West

Departed Paris, France                      
     New Delhi, India
     Tokyo, Japan                      04/03/73        04/07/73
     Papeete, Tahiti                   04/03/73        04/05/73
     Lima, Peru                        04/05/73        04/05/73 
     New York, NY		
Arrived Paris, France                              

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