Originally Posted by
tmiw
How much demand is there for inter-island flying anyway?
Pick a random date and look at the schedule.
www.hawaiianair.com
March 15, 26 non-stop flights on Hawaiian from OGG to HNL. Midday low fares are $199 r/t, some are higher.
There's only 18 flights from LIH to HNL on March 15.
20 nonstops from HNL to KOA.
Most flights are full when I take them.
It will be interesting to see if SWA can disrupt the market. I don't think they are interested in lower fares, the premise is that they can make money at it given the current fare structure. In the beginning I expect we'll see some short term disruption to the fares given the extra capacity they are bringing to the 4 (?) mainland cities they said they would serve.
It's hard to see that anybody would want to set up the infrastructure necessary to support an island based interisland flight operation here. I guess we'll find out eventually what they intend to do. Certainly in the short term, they aren't setting up anything like that. We would know it if they were. There's been some speculation that they will serve multiple islands with a single mainland flight. Not sure how that will work out for anybody not using a companion pass flying to the mainland.
-David