Hilo flights to cost more

[JerryCarr]

Obie is right about the economics of flying to Hawaii. When I lived in Atlanta, I had a friend who worked in revenue management for Delta. He knew I was traveling to Hawaii a lot and told me that they had a lot of "non-revenue" traffic on all their Hawaii routes. This would include frequent flyers on awards and employees on passes. He went on to say that a very high percentage of Delta's paid traffic to Hawaii was leisure-oriented, and that they sold very few paid first class or full-fare coach class tickets for profitable business travel.

As far as the main runway at Hilo is concerned, it can indeed handle wide-body jets. FedEx has landed MD-11s there for years, and I think a 747 version of Air Force One even landed in Hilo not too many years ago.

Cheers,
Jerry