Isle carriers expand hiring after shutdown
Hawaiian Airlines and Mesa Air Group are boosting their hiring to handle expanded flight schedules in the wake of Aloha Airlines shutting down passenger operations Monday.
Hawaiian said yesterday it needs pilots, flight attendants and mechanics now that it has added capacity of 6,000 seats a day.
The airline has openings for 12 pilots, 35 flight attendants and seven mechanics and is accepting applications for the positions on its Web site.
About 1,900 employees were laid off after Aloha Airlines shut down its passenger operations Monday.
"This is only the first step in what we hope will be many more announcements regarding employment opportunities at Hawaiian Airlines," Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
The airline has brought a spare wide-body Boeing 767 into service this week for an additional six daily trips to Maui, and added one morning and one evening rotation to its existing routes.
Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group will have openings for at least 10 aircraft mechanics as well as marketing and administrative staff as part of a near doubling of the capacity of interisland carrier go!, spokesman Paul Skellon said.
The airline has already hired 40 additional employees to handle its expansion. Skellon said he was unaware whether any are former Aloha employees.
Mesa expanded service to 94 from 54 flights a day on Tuesday, in part by adding two aircraft to its fleet of five 50-seat CRJ-200s to meet additional capacity on its four main routes between Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island.
Mesa's ground operations are handled by United Airlines and Swissport International, which might hire as many as 100 additional employees, Skellon said.
Mokulele Airlines has hired eight former Aloha employees and has plans this spring to hire as many as 15 more baggage handlers and ticket agents as well as pilots to handle the arrival of a Cessna cargo plane and two nine-seat turboprop Grand Cessna Caravan passenger planes by May, Chief Executive Bill Boyer said Tuesday.
Island Air spokeswoman B.J. Whitman said the company is looking for flight attendants, ramp operators, mechanics and pilots. Details are available on its Web site, www.islandair.com.
