"The good news is we were able to offer them the seats. The bad news is that we had 550 seats available (yesterday)," said Frank Thomas, United Airlines general manager of customer service in Honolulu.
On Monday, about 1,300 passengers were stranded in Hawaii when the Federal Aviation Administration abruptly grounded Rich International, citing concerns over maintenance procedures.
Thomas said United found 250 seats for Rich International passengers Tuesday and another 550 yesterday. He said he wasn't too happy that the airline had that many empty seats in its 14 daily Hawaii-mainland flights but United was glad to get the new business. It is normal for business to drop off right after Labor Day, he said.
United and Hawaiian Airlines made arrangements to accept vouchers issued by Rich International to its passengers, to be reimbursed later.
Hawaiian ran a DC-10 charter flight yesterday from San Francisco to Honolulu and back to San Francisco for the travel companies that had planned to use Rich. Spokesman Keoni Wagner said Hawaiian would run a nonstop charter from San Francisco to Maui today and send it back through Honolulu.
"We're making all the resources available to them that we can on a charter basis and also on a seat-available basis on our scheduled flights," Wagner said.
He did not have information on the number of passengers.
San Jose-based SunTrips Inc., the biggest tour company using Rich International for its Hawaii business, said it has already lost about $1 million, by having to arrange alternative transportation and temporary hotel rooms for their stranded customers.
Norman Manzione, SunTrips vice president of sales, said that all of its 1,620 customers that were stuck in the islands Monday through yesterday because of the shutdown should have gone home by the end of the day yesterday.
"We took it upon ourselves to take care of the passengers," he said. Manzione said SunTrips booked seats with United for the rest of September and is talking to Hawaiian Airlines about a similar arrangement. However, SunTrips is a discount vacation company that gets its customers by selling package deals that have lower air fares than carriers such as United and it loses money if it uses the scheduled carriers, he said.
He criticized the FAA for choosing the busy Labor Day holiday to shut down Rich International for alleged faulty maintenance procedures.
The FAA has been talking to Rich about its maintenance practices since last year and as recently as Friday his company talked to Rich about it and was assured that everything was all right, Manzione said.
Hawaiian Vacations, another major user of Rich International's charters for its Anchorage-Honolulu tours, said it contracted with Hawaiian Airlines to use its nonstop Honolulu-Anchorage service to take its customers. All Hawaiian Vacations customers are being taken care of, said John Hardwick, president of the Alaska travel company.