Hawaiian Air,
American in ticket deal
The code-sharing deal
By Russ Lynch
will feed passengers
to the local carrier
Star-BulletinHawaiian Airlines Inc. said today it has signed a code-sharing agreement with American Airlines in which the Dallas-based carrier will book passengers on Hawaiian's 150-plus daily interisland flights. Hawaiian said the deal will give its interisland system a strong feed from travelers who come out of American's national and international markets.
American Airlines and travel agents will book clients from the mainland and elsewhere right through to their final neighbor island destinations using American's two-letter booking code, AA, for both the American Airlines flights and Hawaiian's.
It means only one check-in for baggage tags and boarding passes for the whole trip between any American Airlines departure city and any Hawaiian Airlines destination in Hawaii.
"It was sort of the final piece to be put in place," said Paul Casey, Hawaiian's president and chief executive officer, referring to the development of a partnership with American that began in 1994 when Hawaiian was emerging from bankruptcy reorganization.
"Hawaiian recognizes that we can't make it as a stand-alone company, pat in the middle of the Pacific. We need strong partnerships with other companies to feed us," he said.
American flies five round trips to Honolulu each day using McDonnell Douglas DC-10 wide-body jets: one round trip a day from Los Angeles, one from San Francisco, one from Chicago and two from Dallas. It also has one Los Angeles-Maui trip each day using a smaller Boeing 757. The two airlines said they will coordinate schedules for the best matches between American's mainland-Hawaii flights and Hawaiian's neighbor island flights.
The code sharing applies only to American's passengers using Hawaiian's interisland flights and not to Hawaiian's South Pacific or Hawaii-mainland flights.
Aloha Airlines has had a code-sharing arrangement with United Airlines for some years and has said that is one reason Aloha has a bigger share of the interisland market than Hawaiian.
Hawaiian set up code sharing with Northwest Airlines a year ago and that is still in place. But executives at Hawaiian see the deal with American Airlines and its parent company AMR Corp. as part of a much bigger partnership that earlier brought financial help, aircraft leases, maintenance and training arrangements and other benefits to Hawaiian.
Hawaiian's 1994 arrangement to lease six McDonnell Douglas DC-10s from American to replace the aging Lockheed L-1011 for its mainland and South Pacific flights was a key part of the plan that got Hawaiian out of bankruptcy that year.
The agreement included a service agreement and a marketing pact in which American was to help sell Hawaiian's services. Hawaiian's passengers also were able to earn points for American's AAdvantage frequent-flyer program and Hawaiian began using American's SABRE computer reservations system.
However, the deal did not go as far as code sharing, something that Hawaiian has been trying to work out with American since. Hawaiian went a step in that direction in January when it entered a code-sharing agreement with American's commuter affiliates, American Eagle and Wings West Airlines, to connect Hawaiian flights in Los Angeles with 10 cities in California and Nevada.
