Hawaiian picks up more passengers
The Maui News and The Associated PressArticle Photos
In reporting that the airline carried 149,453 more passengers last month over April 2007, communications chief Keoni Wagner said the airline did not break down the numbers between interisland and transpacific flights.
But he noted that the numbers also show virtually the same load factors — the percentage of seats filled on all of the flights — at 88 percent in April and 87.8 percent in April 2007.
“What stands out is that our load factor remains essentially flat, meaning the extra capacity we put into the market met the demand of 25 percent more passengers,” he said.
Aloha Airlines and ATA both shut down all passenger operations in the beginning of April, stranding thousands of passengers in Hawaii and on the Mainland with tickets. In response to the sudden shortfall in airline seats, Hawaiian expanded its schedule on interisland and Mainland routes with 28 new flights a day, or about 6,000 additional seats during the month.
The expansion included adding four Oahu-Maui flights utilizing Boeing 767 aircraft, a wide-body aircraft with 260 seats, more than double the capacity of the smaller Boeing 717s usually flown on the interisland routes. The 717 carries 123 passengers.
Overall, the airline reported carrying a record 718,767 passengers last month, compared to 572,613 carried in April 2008.
The increased passenger load is continuing this month, Wagner said, with the airline expecting more of an increase over the summer months.
“We intend to maintain this level of capacity while the demand is there and expect it to increase slightly over the summer,” he said.
He said the airline also has had an increase in its cargo loads, although Hawaiian does not plan to expand its cargo capacity – for now.
Aloha Airlines cargo operations also had been shut down April 28 after an auction of the business failed, leaving hundreds of businesses across the state scrambling for alternatives for getting perishable produce and flowers to other islands. A sale of Aloha cargo was approved May 2, and the air cargo operations resumed — but with some uncertainty because of a dispute over the pilots’ contract.
In the aftermath, Wagner said Hawaiian’s cargo loads, while still small, were up 50 percent, and the airline will do what it can to handle the demand.
“We have no new plans for cargo, but we’re still doing everything we can to maximize use of our space,” he said. “We have no plans to acquire additional aircraft for cargo, but we’ve done that already in the sense that we’re doing everything to make best use of the space in our aircraft.”
Wagner also responded to a report being circulated in e-mails that the company was automatically charging for travel insurance for passengers booking online. The airline had introduced a special travel insurance program for Mainland passengers, he said, but the online program was pulled after the apparent misunderstanding of how it worked.
“We’ve seen the e-mail being sent around, and it is incorrect,” he said.
For the first four months of the year, Hawaiian transported 2,451,763 passengers, up 9 percent from the 2,247,429 during the same period last year.
Hawaiian also launched service between Hawaii and the Philippines on April 14 but attributed the bulk of the increase to interisland traffic.
Also in April, Hawaiian added 154 new employees and settled its lawsuit with Mesa Air Group Inc. over the Phoenix-based company’s misuse of confidential and proprietary information obtained during Hawaiian’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2004. Hawaiian received $52.5 million in damages from Mesa, which operates the interisland go! airlines.
Hawaiian, which operates a fleet of 29 aircraft, said it wants to acquire more planes to add flights and to provide more flexibility by having more backup aircraft available.
