ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canadian travelers are providing a rare bright spot in Hawaii's
current tourism picture, filling Air Canada's one flight
a day from Vancouver to Honolulu.

Air Canada
flights to Hawaii
are full

Whether winter bookings
will hold up remains
to be seen

---

By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

CANADIANS are providing a tiny bright spot in Hawaii's tourism downturn. They're still filling flights to Hawaii.

Montreal-based Air Canada said its daily flight from Vancouver, B.C., to Honolulu has been heavily used except for the first day or two after the jets slammed into the World Trade Center, when flights were grounded.

"The route to Honolulu has been running almost completely full, averaging 90 percent," said Dick Griffith, a spokesman for the airline in Chicago. "Bookings are holding up quite nicely for the next few weeks."

The numbers aren't big. It is one flight a day at this time of the year, a Boeing 767 carrying a maximum of 205 people --180 in coach class and 25 in executive class. But with loads on U.S. airlines declining and Hawaii hotels operating with many empty rooms, any good news is welcomed by tourism officials.

Air Canada wasn't ready to say what might happen later. It is scheduled to increase its Vancouver-Honolulu service to 16 flights a week on Oct. 28 in a normal seasonal build-up. Griffith also had no immediate information about how the airline's Toronto-Honolulu direct service is doing.

Canada 3000, a discount airline that flies similar routes to those of Air Canada, had no comment Friday.

Canadians ordinarily flock to Hawaii in the Canadian winter. For Western Canadians in particular, Hawaii and Mexico are favorite destinations. September isn't a really strong month as a rule.

Last September, visitor days by Canadians in Hawaii -- the number of travelers times the average length of stay -- totaled about 137,000. That statistic jumped to more than 208,000 visitor days in October, about 252,000 in November and 376,000 in December. This year, according to figures from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, Hawaii had 425,000 Canadian visitor days in January, 430,000 in February and 516,000 in March before Canada's weather warmed and the numbers began to decline.