Paul Casey, Bruce Nobles.
In a surprise announcement this afternoon, Hawaiian Airlines' Chairman John Adams said Casey, a veteran of the airline and travel industries, was chosen after an extensive search over the past few months.
"Paul Casey's knowledge of the key Hawaii, Pacific and Asia market, together with his understanding of the challenges facing large airlines today, make him the ideal person to lead Hawaiian into the future," said Adams at a Honolulu Airport press conference.
Casey will leave the HVCB at the end of March and join Hawaiian Air April 14.
An HVCB official said the bureau will be looking for a replacement for Casey, who has been with the agency for less than two years.
The airline said that Nobles would be moving to the mainland, but he refused to reveal his plans.
Nobles, 49, joined the airline in June 1993, saying his first task was to fix the airline. He is credited now with having achieved that. He took it through a year-long bankruptcy reorganization which held off creditors while the airline was restructured.
When it emerged from bankruptcy in September 1994 as an all-new company, Hawaiian Airlines Inc., it was free of debt but cash poor. In January 1996, Nobles brought in new investors who pumped $20 million in new cash into the company. In return, the investors, led by Adams, took control of the company's board of directors.
Meanwhile, he has reorganized and standardized its fleet, building a new fleet of wide-body DC-10 jets for its long-haul services to the mainland and the South Pacific.
Hawaiian, which had years of staggering losses, has had operating profits in each of the last six quarters.
Casey, 50, became president of the then-Hawaii Visitors Bureau in July 1995 after a nearly 20-year career in the airlines and travel industry. He previous job was as managing director for the Asia-Pacific region for travel company Thomas Cook Group in Sydney. Before that, he was an executive with Pan Am and Continental airlines.
The Australia-born Casey has presided over the bureau during a turbulent year and a half. His defection from the HVCB is the latest in a string of top-level resignations over the past two years.
It also comes at a time when the bureau has asked the state Legislature for more than double its current state funding for the next fiscal year. Casey has led a high-profile campaign to get more taxpayer money directed to the bureau so that it can market Hawaii throughout the world.