Island Air files for Bankruptcy

[macuu222]

Well that answers the question if Island Air will be flying into Hilo in the near future. We're going to need a "major" airline to compete with Hawaiians inter-island monopoly. Hopefully Southwest or Alaska may come to the rescue. But it may not be anytime soon.


http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/10/20...3acd38bcba

[Chunkster]

So at least in the short term, Hawaiian's monopoly is actually getting stronger. I think the advent of HA's Ohana Air subsidiary may have at least partly been to thwart the potential growth of Island Air.

[terracore]

This could turn into good news- if somebody like Alaska bought them. They have experience both doing milk runs and operating the smaller aircraft in the Horizon fleet.

[Mac2017]

TC, you hit the nail on the head. I was thinking Southwest, but any airline with big money will work. I always wondered why it costs about 200 bucks round trip to fly inter island for such a short hop when Southwest can fly you from Ontario to Sacramento (about 400 miles) for about 120 bucks round trip if you can book early enough to get the "I wanna get away fare". I always wondered why interisland was so pricey, maybe I'm missing something.....

Could you imagine how nice it would be to fly the super short distance from Kona to Kahului (89.2 miles) for about 100 bucks round trip? I know that will never happen, but we can dream.

With that said, I sure love Hawaiian Airlines miles program for my overall travel needs.

[macuu222]

When Aloha and Hawaiian were having fare wars...they were both offering $19.00 inter-island one way fares to any of the major islands. It didn't last long...but we did manage to buy 10 round trips for $380.00

[Mac2017]

I'm just wondering if anyone remembers the air pass Hawaiian had many, many, many moons ago? If I remember it was 2999.00 for the year, but my memory fades me at times.

[Mac2017]

I just googled it lol. It was ATA that offered that unlimited air pass for the annual price of just under 3k. Holy cow I wish that deal was still around.

[Rob Tucker]

I used those ATA passes for a few years. It was sweet. I was paying about $2k at the time.