Hawaiian Airlines has announced fleet expansion plans again, and this time it’s the Neighbor Islands that will likely enjoy a substantial capacity boost.
The carrier said it signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus earlier this month, outlining an agreement to acquire 16 of the manufacturer’s new A321neo aircraft between 2017 and 2020, with rights to purchase an additional nine aircraft.
According to Peter Ingram, Hawaiian’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, the new long-range, single-aisle planes will be used on routes between Hawaii and the western U.S., including a number of new nonstop flights to the Neighbor Islands.
“Because it’s a somewhat smaller aircraft than what we operate today, 190 seats vs. close to 300 on our wide bodies, we will have the ability to consider some markets that may not have quite as much demand to support a daily service,” Ingram told Travel Weekly. “And it gives us some new possibilities in terms of different city-pair origin and destination connections.”
Ingram said the A321neos will be the most fuel-efficient planes flying between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland after their introduction later this decade and noted that decisions concerning precisely where the carrier’s new aircraft will fly won’t be made until much closer to the planes’ actual delivery date.
Even so, Hawaiian seems to have already mapped out a reasonably detailed plan for their eventual use.
“By and large it is probably going to be the cities that we already serve that are large population centers in the western U.S.,” Ingram said. “There may be a couple of differences as we get closer [to delivery], but this definitely opens up some more opportunities for us in flying other nonstop flights into Maui but also into Lihue [on Kauai] and Kona [on the Big Island].”
Hawaiian now offers nonstop flights to 10 cities in the western U.S., but the bulk of that service flies into Honolulu with only a limited number of nonstop segments to Maui.
In recent years, competitors like Alaska Airlines have inaugurated a number of nonstop flights to not only Maui but also Kauai and the Big Island from the western U.S. onboard long-range, narrow-body aircraft, capitalizing on increased demand for direct service that bypasses Honolulu.
Hawaiian has been busy expanding into Asia and Oceania lately while enjoying its firm handle on the state’s interisland market since Aloha Airlines’ demise in the spring of 2008.
Ingram said the carrier saw “great” domestic and international demand for Hawaii in 2012 and didn’t expect more nonstop flights to the Neighbor Islands, originating from the western U.S., to impact Hawaiian’s existing interisland business substantially.
“The trend of flying directly from cities in the western U.S. to the Neighbor Islands is already gone a long way down the road with our competitors,” he said. “So the fact that we’ll be really the last carrier to mix in some single-aisle aircraft won’t change the overall demand that much.”