Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

[aloha-anon]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

I'm not optimistic about $70 OW after this whole battle of airfares is over. I've never considered Aloha and Hawaiian as competitors because history has shown very little competition between them. So I see them trying to recoup all the losses incurred from this current fight. I wonder how bad Island Air is suffering from this or if their niche flights to the smaller airports are helping them sustain the losses?

History has shown exactly the opposite! Hawaiian has been trying to put Aloha out of business for 60 years!

Where do you get all these ideas from about 1st year captains and AQ & HA never being historical competitors? Sheesh!

Island Air by the way just announced 30 pilot layoffs. Just in time for the holidays. Thanks Mesa!

[aloha-anon]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

Interesting side note, Alaska Air has been flying 737-800s to Hawaii to earn ETOPS certification.

Another gem from you joshuatree! Show me one photo anywhere of an Alaska aircraft in Hawaii.

[joshuatree]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

Another gem from you joshuatree! Show me one photo anywhere of an Alaska aircraft in Hawaii.

No photos, the info is based on the links below. I've used past tense because the timeframe for the flights have already come and gone. Now if they didn't occur, oh well, but it does show another potential player in the market.

http://www.airwaysnews.com/channels....9&channel_id=6

http://starbulletin.com/2006/08/29/b...s/story03.html

[mel]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

How's this for a wet dream...

I booked tix to go to Maui next month. $29 each way on Hawaiian.

All the hand-wringing about go! coming in and lowering prices... but guess what, now I can afford to go see mom on Maui more often... It used to cost over $100 to get over there...

Why couldn't Aloha and Hawaiian get thier crap together and give us reasonable rates? Dude, I've been flying interisland for over 30 years. Getting the shaft like we had been until go! came on the scene was sickening. I have no qualms about these low fares especially since I have no reason to believe we'd be getting lower fares had go! not come around.

Dick, I agree 100% with you on this one.

This past week I just used my 2 $19 tickets to be with my family this Thanksgiving holiday. I was on the Big Island for 4 days to eat Thanksgiving turkey, spend time with my family and even get the brunt of a 5.0 earthquake thrown my way. All because this year I chose not to sacrifice Thanksgiving like I did last year.

Last year at $79 each way for the cheapest flight on Aloha, I could only choose one holiday... Christmas.

This year I bought 4 $19 tickets (near $25 each when taxes are calculated in) for less than $100! So in December I go again for $19 each way for my Christmas holiday.

Thanksgiving: (HNL to ITO to HNL)

Aloha - $19
Go - $19

Christmas: (HNL to ITO to HNL)

Hawaiian - $19
Aloha - $19

Thanks Mesa / Go for making interisland flying affordable again.

And like I mentioned in a previous incarnation of this thread, I would gladly pay a few more dollars if any of our airlines would offer coupons and ditch those dreadful change fees, which interisland travellers were never subject to in the past.

Come on Hawaiian, Aloha, Island Air... are you folks up for the challenge?

BTW, has anyone posting to these threads flown on Go! yet? My impression of my Go! flight is posted to my blog with photos.

Enjoy the ride.

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

www.dontflygo.com is now inactive (correction, it's back online with new material), and here's a MySpace blog from someone who definitely supports the local carriers (may have been a former employee of one of the local carriers).

This is what Mesa pays its pilots (who all belong to ALPA):

Pilots are paid per flight hour as negotiated between the Air Line Pilots Association and the Company in accordance with the provisions of the Railway Labor Act. The Contract stipulates minimum pay of 70 hours per 28-day bid period and pilots are paid every two weeks. Current first year First Officer pay is $18.15 per flight hour for turboprops and $20.43 per flight hour for Regional Jets.

That's pretty sucky pay, considering what you have to do to become a pilot and how many lives are in your hands every time you fly. Hell, I make way more than that, and nobody's life is on the line in my job!

I can't find pilot salary information on the HA career website (and for sure I can't find anything on AQ because they're privately held), but there is a notice that HA is not hiring new pilots right now and the outlook is negative due to the fact that there are still 77 HA pilots who were furloughed who get first dibs on the next jobs. The website further states that HA has underfunded its pilots' pension funds by $4.5 million, which probably means management will go back to the pilots and ask for some concessions the next contract renewal.

Miulang

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

I can't find pilot salary information on the HA career website (and for sure I can't find anything on AQ because they're privately held)

Check the links given by Aloha-anon in post #92.

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

Check the links given by Aloha-anon in post #92.

OK, so here's a comp:
FO with 1 year of experience
Mesa $18.15/hr for props, $20.43 for regional jets
HA (flying 717) $36.00
AQ (flying 737) $23.00

HA pays its FO the most ($12/hr more than AQ and almost DOUBLE what Mesa pays its prop FOs). HUGE discrepancy. Which fleet's FOs do you think are less likely to be happy with their jobs? Which fleet's FOs get treated the best (and therefore have the least attrition?).

In order to stay "competitive", go! would have to offer its FOs at least what AQ is offering per hour, and because HA's pilot pension fund right now is short over $4 million, HA's pilots would have to give back some of their pay (which of course they would fight tooth and nail not to do...they might settle for flying fewer hours to keep everybody flying, though, which would amount to the same thing as taking a pay cut). And HA's gonna run into a potential problem if all their pilots have at least 15 years' experience with the company. There is a mandatory retirement age, and they could very well have a problem finding seasoned replacements if all their senior people retire at approximately the same time.

Miulang

[joshuatree]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

Mesa underpays but does anyone have any idea what Island Air pays their pilots? I actually think a comparison of what other turboprop and RJ pilots make at other airlines would be more accurate. As far as I understand, pilot pay is also dependent on type (class) of plane. Comparing a CRJ-200 to a 717/737 is a little like comparing the 717/737 to widebody planes.

I was reading some older articles on FlyHawaii. At one point, they were stating fares could be as low as $35 for some interisland routes. This was stated in 2005, when fuel was relatively expensive. Wonder how they figured they could make money at that fare?

[damontucker]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

This is in no way to derail this thread at all...

However, I'm wondering what the Captain of a "Superferry" might be making per hour.

Risk factors... etc...

Once that Superferry is up and running... and I can take my car... will this interisland Air war then turn into Air vs. Water war?

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

This is in no way to derail this thread at all...

However, I'm wondering what the Captain of a "Superferry" might be making per hour.

Risk factors... etc...

Once that Superferry is up and running... and I can take my car... will this interisland Air war then turn into Air vs. Water war?

Not for a long, long time, Manoa. Now all the Neighbor Island County councils have sued the DOT and Superferry and demanded that EIS's be done for all harbors. And all the Counties are in the process of drawing up their port growth plans for the year 2030, which is probably going to slow things waaaaaay down for Superferry because the counties will be planning use of their entire harbors, not just to accommodate Superferry.

And if the airfare war continues to that time and airfares still are less than $50, I think it's going to be difficult to fully load up a Superferry trip (maybe not from Oahu to a Neighbor Island, but certainly from a Neighbor Island to another island if the passenger has to "transfer boats" in Honolulu...because the Superferry fares will be assessed according to the number of legs of a trip you travel. So to go from Kona to Lihue, you get to pay for 2 legs per one way trip...one fare from Kona to Honolulu and then from Honolulu to Lihue. That would be $100/OW to get from Kona to Lihue. Honolulu travellers will benefit from Superferry more than Neighbor Island residents will.

Miulang

[dick]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

I'm still waiting for this aloha-anon person to tell me why Hawaiian and Aloha were ripping me and everyone else in this state off for years...

(insert weepy violins here)

So go! comes in and magically airfares are reduced...

What's the deal, dude?

Like mel mentioned, what happened to those coupons? Why the sudden charge for changing flights?

I remember having empty flights before my scheduled flight... "would anyone like to fly on an earlier flight?" I tried that recently, they told me it would cost me $20 to get on the plane before mine that was totally empty. Of course, I dutifully asked them if they were smoking crack... which didn't go over well...

Needless to say, Hawaiian and Aloha really need to rethink how they've been treating customers here.

We long-time fliers are fed up and at this point have little sympathy for the crap we've been fed for too long...

[mel]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

I remember having empty flights before my scheduled flight... "would anyone like to fly on an earlier flight?" I tried that recently, they told me it would cost me $20 to get on the plane before mine that was totally empty. Of course, I dutifully asked them if they were smoking crack... which didn't go over well...

This is exactly what happend yesterday in Hilo. The Go! flight before mine was late in arriving. The ticket lady asked if I wanted to be put on that flight after it left from Hilo or wait for my scheduled reserved flight which was due to arrive an hour later. I opted to take the "earlier" flight option. They changed my ticket info on the computer and issued me an "exempt" ticket with no extra charge.

Not too long ago, both Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha used to ask me the same thing if I came in early, whether or not I want to take an earlier flight, which I always did.

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

Don't quote me on this, but I think all the carriers waive that $20 fee for tourists who have missed their connecting flights when coming through HNL to a Neighbor Island from CONUS due to schedule delays. And if their flight gets in early and the traveller requests to board an earlier flight, I doubt they charge that $20 ticket change fee. Since I haven't had to fly through HNL since the new rules were put in place, I can't tell you for sure. But since those people are at the mercy of an airline's schedule, it would make sense that they would do this (and they and the tourist bureau don't want those moneybag tourists to think ill of Hawai'i, do they? ).

And as I said previously, I think HA and AQ discriminated against local travellers in the past by keeping interisland fares for locals higher than necessary in order to subsidize travel for the tourists (before the advent of direct flights to the neighbor islands from CONUS, I remember paying one fare to get to HNL and it only costing like $20 more to go holoholo on other islands--remember the "Island hopper" fares?). I'm not sure they are discriminating against local travellers anymore except maybe on that fee to rewrite your ticket to get you on an earlier flight.

I can kinda understand why the airline might want to do it, though: your load factors (and the baggage handling) gets all messed up if people choose to travel on a flight for which they were not ticketed.That $20 may represent more of a "nuisance" deterrent (to cut down on the number of people who don't fly at the time they are scheduled) than it is a way to make money. And with the new Homeland Security rules, it behooves the industry to know who's flying where and when ahead of time.

And since the flights from HNL to a neighbor island are fairly frequent (i.e., for HNL-->OGG, flights depart about every half hour or so), the public got used to thinking it was no big deal to fly whenevas (as in, "whenevas I get to da airport") rather than honor the departure time on their ticket.

Miulang

[aloha-anon]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

My impression of my Go! flight is posted to my blog with photos.

Enjoy the ride.

Even you say it yourself on the blog Mel.

"consumers will do good to take advantage of the current low prices now before one or more of the interisland carriers go out of business and prices climb again".

Its pretty obvious even to supposed go! "supporters" what Mesa is doing here in Hawaii. how anybody things this is good for hawaii long term is beyond me. I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP.

[aloha-anon]

Re: Hawaii's Interisland Air War - Chapter 2

I'm still waiting for this aloha-anon person to tell me why Hawaiian and Aloha were ripping me and everyone else in this state off for years...

(insert weepy violins here)

So go! comes in and magically airfares are reduced...

What's the deal, dude?

Like mel mentioned, what happened to those coupons? Why the sudden charge for changing flights?

I remember having empty flights before my scheduled flight... "would anyone like to fly on an earlier flight?" I tried that recently, they told me it would cost me $20 to get on the plane before mine that was totally empty. Of course, I dutifully asked them if they were smoking crack... which didn't go over well...

Needless to say, Hawaiian and Aloha really need to rethink how they've been treating customers here.

We long-time fliers are fed up and at this point have little sympathy for the crap we've been fed for too long...

Dick, you begin with a very strong assumption. So let me get this straight before I answer you.

What you are saying is because a sociopathic & defiant CEO can ride into Hawaii a proven record of a "scorched Earth policy" with airlines on a personal vendetta

Mesa Air Group Inc. used confidential information obtained as a potential Aloha investor to enter the interisland market with the intent of driving Aloha out of business.

...in its suit, Aloha said Mesa signed two confidentiality agreements — in 2005 and January 2006 — stipulating that Mesa only would use the confidential information for the purpose of pursuing an investment... “Mesa came to Hawaii under false pretenses, making false promises,” said David Banmiller

Somehow this constitutes that Aloha and Hawaiian have been "ripping off the people of Hawaii". This is what you are saying right?

This is like saying George Bush is a terrorist after Al Quaida captures American hostages. Or saying a local liquor store was ripping off people on groceries after the Mafia burns it down because they failed to pay them "protection".

It is very offensive and selfish for anybody to claim AQ & HA were "ripping off Hawaii" when their airfares have been 100% in line with airfares across the USA. in fact, airlines on the mainland typically CHARGED MORE than HA & AQ before mesa /go! showed up.

Check all my links before you reply. mahalo.