Originally Posted by
sbm12
Maybe, maybe not. The case made by HA is that the economic interest to the US from these flights is in the form of inbound tourism rather that outbound business. And it has some strong numbers.
Sure, HA's existing flight has some strong numbers, but that flight benefits zero percent of the American traveling public. Quite frankly, the US government didn't negotiate valuable HND rights (especially daytime rights) so that a leisure-oriented airline in HI could use those rights to fly Japanese tourists to the islands. Especially when HA could obtain the same economic impact and benefit if it chose to fly from NRT.
These very limited frequencies' highest and best use is to enable US business travelers (whose destination is Tokyo) to use the preferred Tokyo airport.
If the US business-centric legacy airlines (the US3) had all of the HND daytime frequencies they desired, then there would be no sin in permitting HA to use some for its tourist market. But there aren't enough daytime frequencies to go around, and the US traveling public's interests should prevail over interests of the HI-bound Japanese tourists.
Personally, I don't think there was any chance from the very beginning that HA would get a second frequency, and the DoT required all airlines to re-apply for their existing gateway frequencies as a convenient way of denying HA a daytime frequency. I also don't think the DoT had any intention of denying UA, AA and DL their existing west coast frequencies. Basically, the only open question, IMO, is who gets the other two.