round
60,000 Britons visit Hawaii
each year, a small proportion of the annual seven million visitors that
these spectacular islands receive.
A trip to Hawaii involves a substantial amount of time in the air, but
the journey can be completed in a day. United Airlines, for example,
flies from Heathrow to the US, and has 20 flights a day from the US
to four of the eight main Hawaiian islands.
Two
of the big airlines serving Hawaii have recently added new routes to
the US. Hawaiian
Airlines, the flag carrier, which operates frequent daily services
from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, recently added Seattle
to Maui and San Diego to Honolulu.
It is the only airline that flies from the West Coast to six of the
islands, and in addition it operates more than 150 inter-island flights
every day. The replacement of its McDonnell-Douglas DC-9s with new Boeing
717-200s will be complete by the end of the year.
Hawaiian Airlines, which launched in 1929 as Inter-Island Airways, is
now America’s 12th-largest operator, carrying six million passengers
a year.
With
the acquisition of new Boeing 767 aircraft, Hawaiian Airline’s
vice-chairman Paul Casey
says the company has more potential routes, such as trans-Pacific or
to more US destinations. Currently the airline flies weekly to the South
Pacific destinations of Tahiti and Samoa.
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“No-one will travel
non-stop from London to Honolulu, but many carriers do a one-stop service
to the West Coast,” says Mr Casey. “It is not that difficult
to get here. UK vacations tend to be a little longer than in the US,
and we get a lot of visitors from the UK. It is a long way, but we think
it’s worth it to get here.”
Mr Casey reckons Hawaii is the top destination worldwide for users of
frequent-flier miles. Hawaiian Airlines competes with rival Aloha Airlines,
but he adds: “We get together on issues that affect the industry
in general, so we have a good, friendly relationship.”
Aloha Airlines, a mainly inter-island airline, has also expanded its
route network to the West Coast, using smaller airports such as John
Wayne in southern California’s Orange County for daily flights
to Honolulu and Kahului on Maui. Aloha also flies to Oakland in California
and Las Vegas. The Marshall Islands and Christmas Island are among its
Pacific destinations.
Aloha
president Glenn Zander says California alone produces the same number
of tourists to Hawaii as Japan (approximately 1.8 million). “Hawaii
needs to expand its air services eastwards, to Singapore and Australia,”
he says.
“For Hawaii to live up to its potential, the business aspect is
a necessary component. Our convention centre is very new, but as people
become more aware of it and come to view Hawaii as a business and conference
destination, the number of business travellers will increase.”
United Airlines, founded by Hawaiian-born Pat Patterson, has been serving
the islands since 1947. Although United also flies to the Caribbean,
Hawaii is the airline’s only major leisure market destination.
The economic downturn has forced United to reduce its schedule to and
from Japan.
Norman
Reeder, outgoing managing director of United’s Hawaii division,
says: “The number of visitors from
the UK has clearly gone up. It is a small percentage of the total, but
it is growing. We also want to increase Hawaii’s international
business traffic.
“We had the Asian Development Bank conference (with more than 3,000
delegates) in May and, as more commerce grows between Hawaii and the
rest of the world, I want United to get its share.”
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