Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
If flying out of Tokyo is a point for United, they have not restarted their Narita Honolulu route after the pandemic. That would a welcome return. But it is not an Asian route, and not in the range of the Guam based 737s.
With a bit of creativity on the aircraft scheduling, they could probably do HNL-HND-HNL in the not slot restricted late night hours.
There a certain "Honu" issue that pretty much killed a UA return to HNL-TYO flying. A double decker Honu issue. UA currently has the late night/early morning slot for US-HND flying. It is using it on HND-GUM. Realistically, that late night slot for HND works best for HNL-HND but as I said, there is a "Honu" issue and HAL gave up that late night slot. In hindsight, DOT should have given it to HAL and no daytime HND slots for them and given it to one of the US3.