Alex909

Back in January, HA filed a request with DOT to serve between Tokyo Haneda and the Big Island. Now, DOT assigned the Haneda slot to Delta, who will continue to serve it from SEA instead.

http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/n....html?page=all

This is unfortunate for Hawaii. Hawaiian's Haneda / Honolulu service is indeed very popular and bookings seem strong (personal observation).

Until a few years ago, Japan Airlines (JAL) had scheduled "non stop" service between Kona and Narita (the second Tokyo airport) but then it went through near bankruptcy a few years ago and decided to drop the route. We used this former service once a year and found that it had a strange snag -- on the Kona -> Narita segment the flight had to stop in Honolulu for about one hour. We always wondered about the reasons for this mystery stop. Was it because Kona airport could not handle international departure procedures?

It is interesting how Hawaiian CEO Mark Dunkerly is framing the DOT decision as business vs. leisure travel and I totally agree with him. There is a strong blanket perception on the mainland that Hawaii is not a business friendly state, which is untrue (Billy Kenoi's Hawaii County, for example, is extremely business friendly to the tourism industry and there were long standing efforts to create better conditions for high tech in Hawaii by establishing tax incentives for creative industries, for starters see ACT 221 here: http://www.hawaiibusiness.com/hawaii...after-act-221/).

In any case, does Hawaiian need to be limited by Hawaii? Alaska calls itself Alaska Air, but it is headquartered in Seattle... Hawaiian probably also needs to outgrow Hawaii. Focusing on Hawaii itself too much also has the unintended side effect of reinforcing a public perception of Hawaiian Air as being a "LCC"/low cost vacation traveler airline when Hawaiian with its long history and great safety record clearly is not an LCC (LCCs are a relatively recent occurrence in Japan and many Japanese travelers are conservative -- still very reluctant to use LCCs -- I get asked about this all the time in Japan when I ask friends in Tokyo why they choose ANA or JAL for their trip to Hawaii).

How about serving Narita - Kahului instead (if that can be done, not sure)? Narita is further away from Tokyo, but recently there is very reasonable bus service from Tokyo station to Narita and the "Narita Express" trains have been revamped as Narita airport is trying hard to compete with Haneda. Maui has the benefit of better shopping and larger hotel capacity. Another option would be to try to get a slot out of the new Nagoya Chubu airport ("CENTRAIR") which is the new kid on the block in Japan and well fed by JAL and ANA.

jk88usa

I've always wondered why Hawaiian doesn't just start Narita-Kona if they are so desperate to start it up. They'd likely receive just as much if not more business than service to Haneda. It's a ways out of the city but transport is readily available and with the majority of Hawaiian/US flights out of Narita, I don't see it as a problem.

There is little to no chance they'd ever be able to serve Maui without the awkward one stop service in Honolulu you described with JAL years ago. With the 6995 foot runway it's virtually impossible to service an A330 semi-TPAC flight. They'd probably be able to land but not take off without a stop.

As to your point about expanding beyond Hawaii, I think that's a brilliant idea. Aloha sort of did it...but with Hawaiian its going to take time. West Coast and maybe a Delta-like hub in Tokyo would definitely be their best bet.
We'll see...but I'm guessing that thought isn't too far off into the future once they get additional A330s and new A321s

Alex909

It was reported today that the Haneda slot Hawaiian was trying to pry away from Delta finally ended up with AA, who will serve it from LAX! This is interesting, because DOT had recently awarded it to Delta again, but it put a "must serve daily" restriction, followed by Delta voluntarily relinquishing the slot!

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/a...from-delta.ece

As much as I would have liked this slot to go to Hawaii, I think this is actually a good outcome overall. There is no real reason that two of the only four available Haneda/US slots need to be occupied by Hawaii based flights and LAX needs better connections to Tokyo badly. Narita is perfectly fine for leisure travelers from- and to-Hawaii. (A quick opinion poll with our Tokyo inlays and friends shows that they prefer Haneda over Narita, but it is not a strong enough preference to matter.)

LIH Prem

I read about that here: http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...haneda-flight/

It will be interesting to see if AA can make that work with the competition that already exists on LAX-HND.

-David