<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by channa:
Any fee AQ can get away with on this is simply gravy. If you look at how they processed standbys (slips of photopied paper and a green crayon with a hand-written time), they had no idea who they had on the list, and you know they didn't offload people from later flights to release the inventory for sale. So, unless the later flight was oversold, there was really no benefit to AQ other than goodwill (which is apparently valued at $15).
I wonder if the Hawaii tourism board has any input on this. This may very well be many people's first interaction with someone on the islands, and definitely not a favorable impression.</font>
It is and it is not. Many Hawaiians would often fly from one island to another for such things as medical treatments, shopping trips, visiting friends etc when the interisland coupons were 40 dollas o/w (about 1-2 years ago) and think nothing of it. Now the minimum cost is about 80 dollas o/w and a 18-22 minute air trip takes 150 minutes (ie 2 1/2 hr) airport-to-airport in-to-out. Thus the locals are definately cutting back on their trips. The Japanese visitors are down 20-25% and the 49 USA visitors are up 5-8%. More 48 USA flights are going directly to the outer islands too. I thing HA and AQ are shooting themselves in the foot (and in the knee too).
MisterNice