Hawaii-based Airlines - go! Airlines on-time performance / arrival in HNL

My wife and I are returning to the islands in May, but have never used any carrier other than HA for inter-island flights. We've pretty well figured out connection times and other essentials for those flights, but on this trip go! has a better-timed flight from ITO-HNL for our needs, and is selling for $39++ one-way, instead of HA's $138++ the afternoon of our departure.

Can anyone comment on go!'s average on-time performance ITO-HNL, or with HNL arrivals in general? Also, any suggestions on minimum connection times, or other tips, from go! to mainland flights?

Oddly, I can't seem to locate any meaningful on-time performance for go! (Mesa), and what little information is available is kind of worrying... FlightStats.com shows a go! flight YV962 on that route that arrived 48 minutes late yesterday, but doesn't show up at all on go!'s website. And a sister flight YV1962 that doesn't appear to have operated at all, according to go!'s site flight status.

Any insight on the reliability of go! for making a mainland connection?

While some of HA's FF and other policies are borderline "gotcha," their interisland service has a great on-time record. With their much heavier interisland frequency, they also have more back-up options than go! should a flight be cancelled or drastically delayed. Some people think the price differential is partly due to their taking advantage of their reputation among Islanders and partly due to their habit of holding back seats for potential connections onto their mainland flights, thus throwing more of the available seats into the higher cost groups. I'm not sure how true all that is, but it's what we hear.

go! has a reputation in the Islands for serious delays and cancellations, as well as not taking great care of the PAX affected. I have not, however, seen any statistics for Mesa where go! is broken out separately allowing for an unbiased comparison. If anyone knows of any, please post.

If connections to a mainland flight are involved, I would choose HA to avoid possibly missing a long haul flight.

Disclosure: I have never flown go! and am of the opinion that their unfair business practices resulted in the demise of AQ. I was not a big fan of AQ, but I strongly believe they were not given a fair playing field.

While some of HA's FF and other policies are borderline "gotcha," their interisland service has a great on-time record. With their much heavier interisland frequency, they also have more back-up options than go! should a flight be cancelled or drastically delayed. Some people think the price differential is partly due to their taking advantage of their reputation among Islanders and partly due to their habit of holding back seats for potential connections onto their mainland flights, thus throwing more of the available seats into the higher cost groups. I'm not sure how true all that is, but it's what we hear.

go! has a reputation in the Islands for serious delays and cancellations, as well as not taking great care of the PAX affected. I have not, however, seen any statistics for Mesa where go! is broken out separately allowing for an unbiased comparison. If anyone knows of any, please post.

If connections to a mainland flight are involved, I would choose HA to avoid possibly missing a long haul flight.

Disclosure: I have never flown go! and am of the opinion that their unfair business practices resulted in the demise of AQ. I was not a big fan of AQ, but I strongly believe they were not given a fair playing field.

I agree on all counts -- except that I have flown go! and it was a miserable experience. (They also twice canceled flights on me and gave no notice, forcing an overnight in HNL).

I have flown go! quite a few times and have never had a problem with cancellations or tardiness. I have connected to/from mainland flights to go! in HNL twice, I do believe (one outbound, one inbound). No problems at all. Of course, as with all aviation-related anecdotes, YMMV.

I have flown go! quite a few times and have never had a problem with cancellations or tardiness. I have connected to/from mainland flights to go! in HNL twice, I do believe (one outbound, one inbound). No problems at all. Of course, as with all aviation-related anecdotes, YMMV.

My experience is the same as egcarter's.

OP, before you fly go!/Mesa, please look at some of the threads here about them.

They are the source of much misery and pain to a lot of Hawai`i folks through their business practices.

Most of my friends and acquaintances will pay more, not take the trip if it's at all discretionary, or wait longer for an HA/IslandAir/Mokulele/PacificWings flight if need be in order to never give go! any more money after they way they hurt so many locals.

I've had two delays now and several on time flights. IME, it's bearable when you're on time (CRJ-200s stink regardless of who flies them), but if it's delayed, it can be a nightmare. The ground staff at HNL seems to be entirely controlled by the folks in Mesa, AZ, so when we had a recent incident where there was an overbooking (they let 52 people on board the 50-seater CRJ), it took an hour to resolve because the FA couldn't get anyone to handle the situation. The situation was never resolved by the grounds crew... two pax decided they'd volunteer themselves off the plane without any promise of compensation or rebooking.

I'm in the don't fly go! category unless you really really have to or it's free or next to free.

HA is just jealous because go! has better ontime performance. Awww what a bummer.

:confused:

You're welcome to go to DOT.gov and do some research:

For 2008:

Mesa Average arrival delay 12 minutes
Hawaiian Average arrival delay 1 minute

Mesa Percent/# of flights canceled 3.61%/9227 (!)
Hawaiian Percent/# of flights canceled .92%/570

Mesa Average departure delay 12 minutes
Hawaiian Average departure delay .46 minute

Mesa Percent of flights late 23% (!)
Hawaiian Percent of flights late 9%

If one is going to gamble, Vegas is more fun.

And, most folks who actually live in Hawai`i tend to be appalled at go! and angered by what they did to friends and `ohana.

OP - one of the things that you will notice if you frequent this forum much is that a number of members here, including a couple of moderators, have very strong feelings about go! that seem to have more to do with non-flying issues than they do with flying issues. Those members and moderators will answer every question about the flying experience interisland by strongly urging the member asking the question not to fly go, again for their own mostly non-flying reasons. Despite the fact that the moderator of this forum and the moderator of the Hawaii forum are among the most frequent participants in this vendetta against go!, that is not the official position of Flyertalk. They are posting as members, not as moderators, which is their right. Unfortunately, their identifying information identifies them as a moderator in every post, even those posts where they are posting as members. In my opinion this has resulted in a number of Flyertalk members who did not share their opinions feeling uncomfortable posting in this forum.

In any situation where you are flying on two separate tickets, it is wise to allow more time at your connection point than if connecting on one ticket. The amount of extra time should be governed by the amount of inconvenience/expense of missing the second flight.

The on-time performance of all interisland carriers is quite good. The odds of any particular flight on any of them being late is pretty small. I would make my selection based on price and schedule, but I would adjust my schedule as suggested in the second paragraph of this post.

OP - one of the things that you will notice if you frequent this forum much is that a number of members here, including a couple of moderators, have very strong feelings about go! that seem to have more to do with non-flying issues than they do with flying issues. Those members and moderators will answer every question about the flying experience interisland by strongly urging the member asking the question not to fly go, again for their own mostly non-flying reasons. Despite the fact that the moderator of this forum and the moderator of the Hawaii forum are among the most frequent participants in this vendetta against go!, that is not the official position of Flyertalk. They are posting as members, not as moderators, which is their right. Unfortunately, their identifying information identifies them as a moderator in every post, even those posts where they are posting as members. In my opinion this has resulted in a number of Flyertalk members who did not share their opinions feeling uncomfortable posting in this forum.

There is, of course, no "vendetta" involved here; please ignore the red herring characterizations. I would also invite the op and any others to perhaps give more weight to those who actually live in Hawai`i rather than those who simply drop in from time to time. Moreoever, it is very appropriate to share with a prospective visitor to Hawai`i a moral perspective on how their choices will continue to impact local folks and culture; I assume that most folks planning a visit are unaware of the tawdry and judged-by-the-courts-as-illegal behavior of go! and would find such information helpful to know in the same way they would want to know such information about any company anywhere.

KeaauFlyer's words

...and am of the opinion that their unfair business practices resulted in the demise of AQ. I was not a big fan of AQ, but I strongly believe they were not given a fair playing field.

in the end are pretty representative of local feelings.

A little sleuthing will also show that having pilots who fell asleep and overshot their destination by 15 miles (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-535868/Dozy-pilots-sacked-falling-asleep-overshooting-airport-15-miles--despite-panicked-calls-controllers.html) says something about the company. Which, of course, leads to a final observation for the moment: the distinction between "flying" and "non-flying" issues is a distinction without a difference. Any company's practices are of a piece.

In any situation where you are flying on two separate tickets, it is wise to allow more time at your connection point than if connecting on one ticket. The amount of extra time should be governed by the amount of inconvenience/expense of missing the second flight.

The on-time performance of all interisland carriers is quite good. The odds of any particular flight on any of them being late is pretty small. I would make my selection based on price and schedule, but I would adjust my schedule as suggested in the second paragraph of this post.

I would second all of this advice, but also only note that if flying IslandAir, go!, or PacificWings, the connection will include some time on the tarmac at the commuter terminal and it's very easy to end up inside and then have to re-clear security again at the overseas or inter-island terminal.

I had a really good professor for Business Ethics in grad school who spent some time talking about "corporate morality." This very wise prof was of the opinion that the ethical tone set by the leadership of a company would eventually permeate all aspects of its operations and have a marked effect on the customer experience. Whether it is unfair competitive practices, cutting corners, or stock manipulation, it comes through to the customer sooner or later. go! and Mesa have not been good corporate citizens in Hawaii, and there are consequences for that.

Thanks to all who have responded. After doing a bit more research, I'll say that I'm worried about flying go! primarily because their on-time record compared to HA seems to be... crap. A 60+ minute delay once per day on some random flight seems a bit too risky when a mainland connection is at stake. So they're highly unlikely to get my business.

However, with all due respect to the Kama'aina present, I think that perhaps the ethical argument against go! is overstated at best. With several HI residents as good friends of mine, I can appreciate the sentiments now, while also acknowledging that the community is a bit more... insular, if you'll pardon the term... than that on the mainland.

go!'s conduct since 2006 seems no worse, and in many ways pretty darned restrained, compared to the antics of the major carriers through the various bankruptcy sagas and re-organizations. I also have two family members who are DL pilots, and have watched them get screwed multiple times over the years, all the way back to the Pan Am days. Tales of malfeasance and abuse of employees, customers and locals around their facilities are the rule, rather than the exception.

The difference is that on the mainland, such news peters out before dinnertime, because the concepts of restricted travel options (or travel at all), community-mindedness around a particular industry, and the plight of the frequent traveler just aren't that compelling to the vast majority. Whereas on Hawaii, whenever an ohana gets jerked around, it seems that the pitchforks come out of the closet before the ink on the newsprint is dry... ;)

Anyhow, no offense meant, and my gratitude to the locals for sharing their story. But I'd opine that the evidence indicates there are probably far more evil airlines out there than go!, and that HA's price structure -- particularly for flights that just _happen_ to be around island-to-mainland connection times -- might be slightly more extortionary (or at least monopolistic) than friendly business practices might otherwise suggest...

As long as there's a $100+ price difference between HA and their competition on popular flights, there is most definitely a market niche for someone to fill.

However, with all due respect to the Kama'aina present, I think that perhaps the ethical argument against go! is overstated at best. With several HI residents as good friends of mine, I can appreciate the sentiments now, while also acknowledging that the community is a bit more... insular, if you'll pardon the term... than that on the mainland.

go!'s conduct since 2006 seems no worse, and in many ways pretty darned restrained, compared to the antics of the major carriers through the various bankruptcy sagas and re-organizations. I also have two family members who are DL pilots, and have watched them get screwed multiple times over the years, all the way back to the Pan Am days. Tales of malfeasance and abuse of employees, customers and locals around their facilities are the rule, rather than the exception.
I'm sorry but you need to read a little more: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2007/Oct/30/mesaruling.pdf

HA is just jealous because go! has better ontime performance. Awww what a bummer.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think all airlines for inter-islands flight should be better on-time performance. It should be improvable to have better on-time arrivals. I remember AQ were number#1 on-time performance is 90%. That was years ago before AQ is cease operations due to bankruptcy protection.

...

I think that perhaps the ethical argument against go! is overstated at best.



That's not possible.

oh, those files you want? The evidence? Oh, it was on my work laptop and I accidentally deleted all the evidence when I was deleting porn from my work laptop.

You have no idea. That was the CFO.

Most people, however, don't care and just want the cheapest flights.

-David

I haven't had the experience of an inter-island flight since 1980, now that I can fly directly to almost any island, but I have had experience flying on Mesa within the CONUS. Let's just say there's a reason that UA flyers consider Mesa to be absolutely the worst United Express carrier (apparently Air Wisconsin used to give them some competition, but I never flew them). I don't see any reason to expect the experience on Go! to be any different.

(I wouldn't fly them anyway, for the same reasons put forth by cblaisd and slippahs. Their business practices are not worth rewarding. The only thing I'll give them credit for is that they do have an attractive paint scheme, even if it does include that ridiculous exclamation point.)