Hawaiian Airlines is offering complimentary Neighbor Island flights for medical professionals throughout the month of April and also plans to continue passenger and cargo service to the Neighbor Islands, the airline said Wednesday.

“This virus has presented an unprecedented test for all of us who call Hawaii home, and we are glad to be able to support the exceptional and important work our medical providers are carrying out across our islands each day to meet our state’s health care needs and help us overcome this challenge,” Hawaiian Airlines President and CEO Peter Ingram said in a news release.

The announcement came on the same day that Gov. David Ige’s 14-day quarantine order for all interisland travelers went into effect, and as overall travel continued to decline under tough restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19.

“I was at the airport again all morning, and it is like I’ve never seen it before, here or at any major airport,” state Department of Transportation spokesman Tim Sakahara said during a news conference in Honolulu on Wednesday. “There are so few people at the airport. I mean it’s sad in a lot of ways because it’s going to hurt for a long time for the people in the transportation industry, but it’s also positive in the fact that it shows that people are taking this to heart.”

Through April 30, all interisland travelers will need to self-quarantine for 14 days or the length of their trip, whichever is shorter. They’re being asked to fill out declaration forms that must be turned in prior to TSA screening and to wear protective equipment. While on another island, they can only go out for essential work or appointments, and upon returning to their home island, they must continue observing the stay-at-home order in effect statewide.

Sakahara said that the first day of the interisland travel quarantine was “very orderly.”

“People have been listening and complying with the new order,” he said. “It has helped, too, that passenger numbers have been very, very low as well, so it’s not causing a delay or any sort of backlog, especially with the interisland (travelers) having to do the screening and fill out the form before going through the TSA checkpoint.”

He added that masks are not required on flights, and that no one is being turned away if they don’t have protective equipment.

The state actually saw an uptick in passengers on Tuesday after several days of declining numbers, from 1,589 on March 26, the first day of mandatory domestic and international arrival quarantine, to 681 on Monday. On Tuesday, there were 906 total arrivals, including 700 on Oahu, 93 on Maui, 90 in Kona and 23 in Lihue, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Sakahara said that arrivals are down more than 98.5 percent compared to last March, and they will likely drop even more as fewer people travel interisland.

He didn’t have exact numbers as to how many passengers had traveled interisland since the quarantine order went into effect at midnight Wednesday.

“The thing about interisland too, you don’t want to double count them per se, because some people might be flying interisland to get from a Neighbor Island to Honolulu per se, and from Honolulu going to their final destination on the Mainland or wherever it may be,” he said.

On Wednesday, Hawaiian Airlines also announced its new schedule. Effective Saturday, the airline will provide a total of 16 daily round-trip flights between Honolulu and Hilo, Kona, Kahului and Lihue; this includes four round-trips between Honolulu and Kahului. For those not traveling to or from Oahu, the schedule offers three daily round-trip flights via Honolulu to all Neighbor Islands.

“We are continuing to provide passenger service to both Molokai and Lanai with ATR-42 aircraft, and all-cargo service connecting Honolulu, Lihue, Kahului, Hilo and Kona with ATR-72 aircraft,” spokesman Alex Da Silva said Wednesday evening. “Both services are operated by Ohana by Hawaiian. Cargo service five times nightly.”

Da Silva added that the airline will offer one round-trip in the morning between Honolulu and both Molokai and Lanai, and another round-trip on each route in the afternoon. The airline also provides one-stop connections between both Molokai and Lanai to Maui via Honolulu.

Hawaiian continues to offer one round-trip each between Honolulu and Los Angeles and San Francisco; service to all other international destinations is currently suspended.

For more information on the airline’s schedule and response to COVID-19, visit www. hawaiianairlines.com/Corona virus.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.