Originally Posted by
jayer
Hawaii has been considered a marginal route from North America for decades, but one status passengers with miles to spend demand as a vacation destination. A necessary evil for a national carrier.
It would be interesting to know if Southwest feels they have arrived at the "necessary" stage and just have to, or they really think they can find margin on coach tickets when others can't.
What's your source for this? If AA thought it needed flights to Hawaii to make it's mileage program more attractive, but didn't think flying there was profitable, they would just fully partner with Hawaiian and Alaska to allow redemption's for the over-water segments to Hawaii and have that as a redemption option without flying there themselves. If Hawaii wasn't profitable, they wouldn't be flying there. I bet they get a lot of revenue from the military to flights to/from HNL.