Two airlines boost
isle-mainland
service

Northwest is adding a daily flight
from Detroit while United
plans a weekly trip

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Two airlines today announced added mainland-Hawaii flights, continuing the boost that the islands are getting from the strength of the mainland economy.

Northwest Airlines said it will launch a daily nonstop service between Detroit and Honolulu on Dec. 7 and United Airlines said it will double its direct San Francisco-Kauai service to two flights a week Oct. 31 while maintaining its daily Los Angeles-Kauai service.

Northwest said the Detroit direct service will complement its existing twice-a-day, one-stop Honolulu service from Detroit via San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Northwest said its one-stop services from Michigan have been popular and the direct service will not only make travel simpler and save time, it also will add more than 200 seats a day to Hawaii.

Cory Zanin, Northwest's director of area marketing in Detroit, said the new nonstop also will provide better connections to Hawaii for the airline's passengers from Milwaukee, Indianapolis and the East Coast.

Current plans call for running the Detroit nonstop through the winter, ending April 1. Northwest also serves Honolulu from Seattle and Minneapolis.

The Detroit service will be operated with a 281-seat Douglas DC-10 aircraft. United, meanwhile, said it will launch a Sunday San Francisco-Lihue service in addition to the current Saturday service. The airline, which said Kauai demand is strong, still runs the daily flight to Lihue from Los Angeles that it started in June 1998, the first Kauai direct service since Hurricane Iniki in 1993. This summer, responding to demand, United added the once-a-week San Francisco-Lihue service, but had planned to end it Aug. 28.

"We are continuing the Saturday flights indefinitely," Joe Hopkins, a United spokesman in Chicago, said today. "We had planned to operate it through the summer only, but the loads have been outstanding," he said.

Bookings for the Saturday flight are strong through September, he said, adding that instead of ending the Saturday service, the airline decided to add the Sunday flight.

The addition will bring United's West Coast-Kauai capacity to almost 1,700 seats a week. The airline uses 188-seat Boeing 757 aircraft on the Kauai routes.

Susan Kanoho, executive director of the Kauai Visitors Bureau, said Kauai is a popular destination for Bay area travelers and that the KVB will continue its marketing and promotion in the area. Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka said the route attracts not only Northern California visitors but others who use San Francisco as a gateway. Strong tourist business from the mainland in recent months has compensated for a drop in business from Japan.