10-12-2017, 12:29 PM
"You guys can all dream on but I just checked and the LAX-ITO flight on United tomorrow still has 32 seats available. Be kind of hard for another airline to step into that market if the numbers aren't there."
"Southwest executives also acknowledged that they are evaluating offering interisland travel — a move that would cut into Hawaiian Airlines’ stranglehold in the islands and potentially hurt smaller local carriers Island Air, Mokulele Airlines and Makani Kai Air. In addition, Southwest said it is considering nonstop flights to neighbor islands."
Alaska flies a few flights a day Alaskans call "the milk run". Basically the flights start in Seattle and end in Anchorage, but they stop at a few ports along the way. For example the SEA-ANC flight might also stop at KTN and JNU. At KTN they drop off the pax that were flying to KTN and pick up the pax that were flying to JNU. At JNU they pick up the pax that were flying to ANC. It makes for a long flight for those going from SEA to ANC with those two extra stops but they never have any problems filling them. They run a similar flight that originates in ANC and ends in SEA that stops off at two other ports similarly along the way.
Using a similar strategy, any airline could supply both mainland and inter-island service. A flight could originate in HNL and fly to ITO, drop off the interisland passengers and fill those seats with ITO pax flying to the mainland.
Basically, the airline flies roughly the same number of miles, but gets more paying customers into the same number of seats.
A Hawaii milk run would be disadvantaged because the overall flight times might be less acceptable (Hawaii is further away from the mainland than Alaska is), but on the other hand interisland travel wouldn't have the horrible weather delays and cancellations that are routine on Alaska milk runs. Many times did I intend to fly to one Alaska city only to fly over it and wind up getting dumped off somewhere else...
"Southwest executives also acknowledged that they are evaluating offering interisland travel — a move that would cut into Hawaiian Airlines’ stranglehold in the islands and potentially hurt smaller local carriers Island Air, Mokulele Airlines and Makani Kai Air. In addition, Southwest said it is considering nonstop flights to neighbor islands."
Alaska flies a few flights a day Alaskans call "the milk run". Basically the flights start in Seattle and end in Anchorage, but they stop at a few ports along the way. For example the SEA-ANC flight might also stop at KTN and JNU. At KTN they drop off the pax that were flying to KTN and pick up the pax that were flying to JNU. At JNU they pick up the pax that were flying to ANC. It makes for a long flight for those going from SEA to ANC with those two extra stops but they never have any problems filling them. They run a similar flight that originates in ANC and ends in SEA that stops off at two other ports similarly along the way.
Using a similar strategy, any airline could supply both mainland and inter-island service. A flight could originate in HNL and fly to ITO, drop off the interisland passengers and fill those seats with ITO pax flying to the mainland.
Basically, the airline flies roughly the same number of miles, but gets more paying customers into the same number of seats.
A Hawaii milk run would be disadvantaged because the overall flight times might be less acceptable (Hawaii is further away from the mainland than Alaska is), but on the other hand interisland travel wouldn't have the horrible weather delays and cancellations that are routine on Alaska milk runs. Many times did I intend to fly to one Alaska city only to fly over it and wind up getting dumped off somewhere else...