Originally Posted by
WebTraveler
Thing that has not been discussed here is that as the day goes on Southwest is almost always running behind schedule. So all these interisland flights are with mainland jets.....so when there's a 2 hr delay on a flight the interisland flight is going to suffer the same delay. With 3 or 4 interisland flights a day how long are people going to put up with a delay like this? My guess when they have to sit for 2 hrs to take a short interisland flight, they;ll think twice the next time.
Actually, Southwest isn't flying from mainland to Hawaii, and then continuing on an inter-island segment.
While they are using "the same planes" they fly to/from the mainland, it's not like the old days where, for example, a DL jumbo jet arrives in HNL, and continues on to OGG, and if you bought just the interisland, your flight would be at the mercy of the flight arriving from mainland.
Simply use Flightradar24.com and can get an idea of what WN is doing - which can be - arrive from mainland and overnight, then go into inter-island service for a few days doing nothing but inter-island flights, until flying a return leg to mainland.
(Flightradar24 allows you to pull up the flight history for an aircraft by registration number. It also displays the registration number as part of individual flight info. So, once you find any WN flight from mainland to Hawaii, you can just click the airframe registration number hyperlink and see
all the flight history for that airframe (how far back you can go depends on whether you are free or have a subscription).
(I'd also comment that comparing mainland short haul flights to Hawaii interisland from a cost/price or almost any other metric is fallacious: for example, Baltimore, MD to JFK (BWI-JFK) is 184 miles - almost the exact distance HNL-KOA.
For BWI-JFK, I can take Amtrak, a bus, a car, a limo, etc. For HNL-KOA, I have no choice. Using a car, I can drive in about 3.5 hrs. If I fly, the flight will be blocked for 1.5 hours. Because of the alternative transportation options, the
demand for flights BWI-JFK is
very low compared to HNL-KOA. HA is making oodles of cash on interisland and I am thankful there's now some competition.)