HA contemplating earlier flights to HNL from neighbor islands
 

Heard HA is thinking of parking interisland planes overnight on outer islands in order to provide earlier flights to HNL. Union has issues with no interisland pilot bases on outer islands, so HNL-based crews will be required to overnight to operate early flights back to HNL. Currently, all interisland planes return to HNL for the night.

They're not contemplating it, they're doing it with the June 1st schedule change. You'll notice the first flights of the day from the neighbor islands all leave at 6am now.

6am flight OGG-HNL last Wednesday was packed. I've occasionally desired an early flight for various reason, and I guess so did others.

You might be surprised how many Hawaiian Airlines employees live in Maui and work at HNL - they will always ultimately fill the plane.

A HA A330 pilot (HNL base) bought my house on Maui. A FedEx (SFO base - talk about a commute) pilot is probably buying the 3 acres I split off from my original 5. And next door to them is a Life Flight pilot. A regular pilots slum just below Makawao...

I regularly hear of people who have issues with important appointments (eg immigration, medical) that are scheduled for times like 8am in HNL. Even with a 6am flight, they're still hard to make!

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know why HA has scheduled extra A321 interisland flights HNL-OGG/KOA/LIH?

Temporary backfill as the 717 pilot training backlog gets caught up.