Inter-Island Airfare alert

[JerryCarr]

Although there is no technical or legal reason to prevent them, the mainland based "legacy" carriers have never made an entry into the inter-island business. Oh, Northwest and maybe one other company have made some stops at some island other than Oahu coming to or from the mainland, but they didn't even try to sell inter-island tickets. It was just cheaper than sending flight to both places. Quite a few of the legacy carriers do have code shares or frequent flyer miles arrangements with the Hawaii-based airlines.

Some airline finance guru somewhere said that the break-even point for inter-island flights is somewhere around $50-60 per flight segment. I have paid as much as $100 per segment to Aloha and Hawaiian (advance purchase, not walk-up) before Mesa arrived.
Were they gouging? It sort of felt like it when I knew I could fly segments of similar distance on the mainland for $59 to $79.

Has Mesa been up front and fair in all their dealings in Hawaii? Probably not. It is a shame that they couldn't just come here and do cut-throat competition without resorting to dirty tricks (using bankruptcy data) and cover-ups (deleting the data along with the "porn."

One of the court cases is pending a judge's ruling right now. It should be interesting. Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Jerry