Across the Pacific in a 737!
 

I saw this on r.t.a a few weeks back but haven't seen it here. Anyway, Air Pacific is going to start twice-weekly trans-Pacific service on a 737! Routing is the twice-weekly extension of the existing NAN-HNL flight to YVR (Canada has a substantial population of Fijian immigrants). A/c will be a 737-800.

Yikes!

I wonder if they'll just forgo the seats entirely and install benches.

First class passengers get to "hot bunk" every 6 hours.

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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

'hot bunk'. Sounds interesting!
Could you tell us more?

RR

Not as interesting or attractive as you are thinking. Hot bunking is a naval, probably submarine term. On those boats, space is limited and there are two (12 hour?) shifts. So when one crew is on duty, the other sleeps in the bunk and they change places on shift change!

on a 737? LUXURY!!! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

CO still flies you Australia to Honolulu by 727!! R/T fare until recently was $US340 ... the best bargain in travel!

Did this trip many times .. a real travel adventure, visitng every speck in the mid Pacific it seemed.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum20/HTML/001014.html




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~ Glen ~

Hawaiian Airlines flies a 737 from OAK to HNL. Oops, you're right, Vulcan; it is Aloha.

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[This message has been edited by AZ_MISMAN (edited 09-01-2000).]

AZ_mizman:
Are you sure its not ALoha?
Alos, CO (Micronesia) flies 738s all over from GUM, including DPS, CNS, KIX,MNL,NGO, F*U,SEL, HKG, and on and on. Other than to NRT,and HNL, they pulled almost all the 757/DC10s out of the Pacific.Even the in(famous) five stop Island Hopper, GUM-HNL is now a 738.

[This message has been edited by Vulcan (edited 08-31-2000).]

Yes, it is Aloha that has 737s from OAK to HNL and OGG. My husband took it a couple of months ago - it's about a 30-minute longer flight than on say a 747. They expect to offer similar service out of Southern California (not sure which airport yet) soon.

I heard a rumor a while back that CO was considering using a 737NG between Newark and Shannon, Ireland!

I would rather stay on Fiji or Hawaii than fly in a 737 across the Pacific http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

anyway, since when did the 737 get ETOPS certified...or do you not need it for the "shorter" hops over the ocean?

Come on guys, it is only a 6-7 hour flight. Though I will not get on it. I don't know about y'all but I prefer 737s over the MD80s any day.

re: the above,
- CO flies a 727 on the island hopper since its higher mounted engines (vs. under wing engines) aren't as vulnerable to debris on the oh so well swept and kept runways in Micronesia.
- only the 737-800 has the fuel capacity to have ETOPS reserves for HNL/California.

According to the Boring website both the 737-700 and 600 have a longer range then the 800:

737-800 - 3,383 miles
737-700 - 3,752 miles
737-600 - 3,510 miles

More then enough range to go the 2,556 miles between HNL and LAX, for example.

Eidetic:
Good Point. I know that originally there was a problem with some of the unimproved runways on some of the stops for the Island Hopper. That is why I was very surprised to see in the latest schedule I recevied with my statment that it is now listed as a 738. If its still a 727, then its a misprint, which wouldn't be a surprise. In the past, in looking at the printed booklet I've found many errors, such a flights going to South Ameria that never return (some of which I have been on).