Announcements you never expect to hear in Honolulu

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay. We had to switch aircraft to one that has de-icing capabilities."

Heard aboard the delayed HA262 on December 19, after boarding N487HA and watching bags be transferred from N478HA, for the flight through the winter storm system that's since dumped snow on Mauna Kea.

LOL! Are these aircraft you are referring to the 717s flying interisland service?

Wirelessly posted (iPhone-ETOPS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

We had difficulties flying out of JHM on WP yesterday through the storm and then circled a few times before landing in HNL. Was quite an interesting flight and something I've experienced a lot more on the mainland than in Hawaii!

Indeed! I was quite surprised, especially since Amakihi (N478HA) and Io (N487HA) were both in the original batch of 717s Hawaiian got in 2001. But Io was the last plane in that batch, so maybe the later ones got some extra features? I dunno.

Mahalo for the response. Yes, I do remember the Amakihi and Io. I think some of the later 717s were former QF/Jetstar a/c that were flying in Australia before joining HA.

Yeah, that's 488/489/490, the ex-Impulse/QuantasLink/JetStar birds. If I recall, the AB-side seat supports are spaced differently than on the ones Hawaiian ordered, making it easy to tell when I'm sitting on an Aussie 717.

Aha! Those aussie 717s must be the ones with the de-icers!

It could also have been that that particular 717 had trouble with it's anti-icing equipment that day. Im no aerospace engineer, but this link says the 717's windshield has an electrical de-icing system as well as a fuel re-circulation system to prevent icing on the wing: http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/boeing717/

And this info page from Boeing says the 717 BR-715 engine nacelles have intake anti-icing capabilities: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...y/ps03txt.html

Again, i'm no aerospace engineer, but if some of the anti-icing equipment on board was inop due to technical troubles that day, maybe the pilots didn't want to take a chance with that storm. I know aircraft have minimum equipment lists (MEL) that list the minimum required equipment onboard that must be operable in order for the airline to fly that plane. I would think that anti-icing equipment would be on the MEL.

No... 488, 489 and 490 were the Aussie ones. 487, the ostensibly de-icing one I flew to Hilo on, has only ever been owned by HA.

Definitely a possibility. N478HA did stay in service, though - it was swapped to the Kauai flight, and 487, which had been heading for Kauai, was sent to Hilo. Dunno.

Good information. Mahalo, everyone!

The 717 still rules...I wish they were still in production.

They would probably still be in production if 9/11 hadn't happened. My understanding was that AA was very interested in TW's orders for the 717 and Boeing's plans for additional stretched version to potentially replace the MD80's. However, 9/11 put a quick end to that.

I do remember some news regarding stretched 717/MD-9X versions as well. Thanks for the history!