Canadian airline start-up
planning charter flights
to Honolulu

It celebrates the news with
hula dancers and a mariachi band
but still has no planes or pilots

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By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

A newly formed Canadian airline says it wants to run charter flights from Vancouver, B.C., to Honolulu and perhaps to Mexico, with scheduled air service a future possibility.

With hula dancers and a mariachi band, MY Airways announced its plans Feb. 28 at a promotional function at Vancouver International Airport. The announcement did not become public in Hawaii until it was picked up by the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and run Friday on the Internet tourism update newsletter the HVCB has been assembling since soon after Sept. 11.

The airline has no aircraft or air crews yet and will need some licenses and other approvals to fly but said it hopes to be operating this summer.

The airline is seeking to fill a gap left by charter operator Canada 3000, which went bankrupt and stopped operations in November, stranding more than 3,000 Canadian passengers in Hawaii.

The airline is based in Richmond, B.C., and controlled by David Ho, chairman and chief executive of David T.K. Ho Enterprises, according to news from Canadian Press published in several media outlets in Canada.

The telephone at the Richmond office was answered "My Airways." Ho told Canadian reporters the MY of the name was from initials of his mother, Rosita May Ying.

The airline would have competition from all over Canada on scheduled flights operated by Air Canada and from Vancouver on flights of Fiji-based Air Pacific, which runs a Vancouver-Honolulu-Fiji service.

Ho told reporters in Canada that he believes his business will be able to control costs to produce lower fares than Air Canada and he hopes to extend later to Hong Kong and other Asian destinations.