About to launch a daily nonstop flight from San Diego to Honolulu, Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. is dangling a new prospect before the local travel industry: a second direct flight to Hawaii.
According to Hawaiian Airlines CEO and Vice Chairman Paul Casey, the airline is considering starting a San Diego to Maui flight. The possibility hinges on how the Honolulu non-stop sells, he said.
“We want to make sure that the Honolulu service does well on a year-round basis and then we’ll look into Maui,” Casey said.
The Honolulu flight, which will depart San Diego at 9:10 a.m., is scheduled to launch June 15. Although Casey said advanced sales are looking strong he wouldn’t offer further details. He also wouldn’t disclose the sales or passenger-load percentages that would indicate whether the flight was profitable.
Within the airline’s ongoing monitoring of the profitability of its flights, Hawaiian’s more far-reaching check , looking at which flights should continue , takes place every three months, Casey said.
The decision to begin flights to Honolulu was made about nine months ago, he said.
“We thought the population base was right, that the economics were right,” he said. “There seemed to be a lot of people here with high levels of discretionary income who like to travel, and we think that it would support a daily service to Honolulu.”
According to Rita Vandergaw, director of marketing and public relations for the San Diego Unified Port District, about a 100,000 people traveled between Honolulu and San Diego in 1998, the latest records available to the port. The figure roughly translates to 130 people a day, she said.
Penetrating The Market
Since then, the number has grown and should increase even more with the Honolulu flight, Vandergaw said.
In recent weeks, Honolulu-based Hawaiian has launched public relations and advertising campaigns to get San Diego primed and receptive to the new Honolulu flight.
The advertising campaign was launched in newspapers and on television, and there is additional promotional campaigns on targeted Web sites, such as Travelocity.com.
Casey and Hawaiian sales executives have been talking to local travel agents, telling them about the flight and the airline itself, and meeting with other business leaders.
Not surprisingly, the possibility of a direct flight between Maui and San Diego was well received by the Port District, which operates Lindbergh Field, and the travel agents, who would book the flight.
A direct flight to Maui could create a popular short trip, said Joyce Dentt, president of Kahala Travel in Mission Valley.
Compared to the sightseeing-driven Honolulu, Maui’s major appeal is the beaches, which can be more relaxing, she said.
Flying directly from San Diego and then taking a connector flight to Maui would take about 6 & #733; hours, Dentt said. A direct flight could trim about two hours from that amount of time, she said.
With the time difference that shaves off another three hours, it becomes a particularly uncomplicated trip and could make Maui an attractive weekend destination , like San Francisco, for instance, she said.
Cost A Key
Price will continue to be a factor, especially for the Honolulu flight to continue, Dentt said.
Hawaiian will have to keep fares competitive with what can be offered through Los Angeles. She said $100 could make the difference, particularly for larger families.
Casey disagreed. When Hawaiian began a non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Maui a couple of years ago, its fare was higher and the market supported it, he said.
“People will pay a little more for nonstop service,” he said. “I’m convinced that San Diego’s no different.”
Weeks from the flight being launched, Casey was hesitant to discuss exact figures. “It’s difficult to know before you start,” he said. “You’ve got to put a price out there and see if it works.”
Unlike the bigger airlines, Hawaiian “lives and dies” by their profits from their flights to Hawaii, Casey noted. In turn, his airline has to focus on being profitable rather than what other airlines are doing, he said.
According to Dentt, it could be a problem. Western Airlines operated a Honolulu to San Diego nonstop flight from 1969 to 1980, and restarted it in 1985. Delta Airlines, which bought Western in 1987, discontinued the flight in 1995. Delta later launched service from San Diego to Honolulu that stopped in Los Angeles, and discontinued that flight in 1997.
The Honolulu flight didn’t sell well when the prices weren’t competitive to what was being offered in Los Angeles, Dentt said.
The Western-Delta flight also had support from the airlines’ feeder markets such as Cincinnati and Salt Lake City, she noted.
In Casey’s view, San Diego and its business community will determine for itself if a Maui flight will be created and if the Honolulu flight even continues.
“If they don’t support us, we’re going to lose money and the flight will go away,” he said.
