Continental to fly direct LAX &SFO to Hilo

[KeaauRich]

New routes start in June, daily from LAX and weekly (on Saturday) from SFO

Yippie!!!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Continental-Airlines-prnews-1391447215.html?x=0&.v=1&.pf=loans&mod=pf-loans

[David Shaw]

Rich, mahalo for posting this good news. Interesting that they are using the 800 with only 168 seats. Let's hope it fills up often! I dunno about a daily flight, though-- could be chancy.

-dwajs

[JerryCarr]

ATA was the last airline to try service from Hilo to the mainland. IIRC, they began as daily, then went to four times a week, and were only doing it once a week when they folded. A lot of people in the airline industry felt that it could have worked if ATA had done a redeye instead of a daylight flight from Hilo to the west coast, thus allowing for easy onward connections to points eastward. Despite ATA's cozy relationship with Southwest, the only practical connections out of OAK were to Chicago Midway and about three points in the Mountain West. Continental not only is doing a redeye out of Hilo, but they have a great feeder network for connecting passengers in both directions. Also, their pending merger with United will dramatically increase the mainland feed. Let's hope this works because it could make East Hawaii far more accessible.

[Susan]

Yeah! This news makes me very happy! We have been flying the Continental non stop from Houston to Honolulu and have wished over and over that we could avoid the Honolulu connection. Changing planes in LA will also give us a break from that long non stop.

[JonP]

Yay! Yay! Yippee! Hilo airport has been looking so forlorn. This is great news.

[Kapohocat]

I can safely say that with my visitors this past week all coming from SFO and LAX they will be happy. I am also glad to support a different airlines than Hawaiian Airlines [!][V][!]- who when they delayed a flight 5 hours tonight told my brother - "we'll be happy to change your flight to tomorrow and NOT EVEN CHARGE YOU A CHANGE FEE". Oh really??? He finally got them to put him on a different flight when they had already easily changed our friends flight who had same itinerary to LAX.

I have been loyal to Hawaiian but 1)they have never been really interested in anyone coming into/out of Hilo 2) they took jobs from Hawaii and moved them out of the country 3) raised their mileage award levels. So I am personally happy to see someone take a little wind out of their sails so to speak.

[KeaauRich]

Now we've just got to encourage our friends and family to take those flights (and we need to also...)to convince Continental/United and others that Hilo is an under-served market. I just hope the fares are comparable to Kona's mainland departures.

[Bullwinkle]

good news indeed

[Kapohocat]

$644 RT for June 2011 on Continental's website.

Expedia is not yet picking up any flights available.

[robguz]

I'm concerned that the SFO flight is set up to fail, at least if it's meant to serve Bay Area vacationers. Once a week isn't much of an option. Why would someone fly this to Hilo and lose a day of vacation arriving in the late afternoon when you can fly another airline through HNL for cheaper and still have most of the day free by the time you arrive in Hilo? A lot of people find red eyes awful. I'd only do one if it was much cheaper than other options. I hope it succeeds, but with that expected pricing, ouch!