STAR-BULLETIN / FILE Travelers line up at the Hawaiian Airlines counter in Honolulu.

Hawaiian Airlines to lose
Las Vegas charter contract

---

By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

Hawaiian Airlines is losing its lucrative Hawaii-Las Vegas charter business for package-tour retailer Vacations Hawaii to Tulsa, Okla.-based Omni Air International.

Hawaiian said today that the contract is worth about $30 million in annual revenue but it has not been profitable. When the contract came up for renewal there was a mutual decision to drop it, Hawaiian said.

The income won't all be lost because the airline will allocate the equipment and crews into a new scheduled nonstop Honolulu-Las Vegas service, officials said.

Vacations Hawaii officials were not available for comment on why they made the switch.

Hawaiian is reallocating its resources from charter business to more profitable scheduled services, said John W. Adams, Hawaiian's chairman, chief executive officer and president. Hawaiian has been running one Las Vegas charter a day using a 304-seat DC-10 widebody jet.

Omni said it will also use a DC-10 when it takes over the business Feb. 1, but it will be configured to carry about 350 passengers in two classes.

Omni will run one round trip a day, said Omni spokesman Bill Zugenbuehler.

Omni Air International has been flying to Hawaii for about four years, Zugenbuehler said. Since last year it has been flying Honolulu-Las Vegas for another package-tour seller, Worry Free Vacations, a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines.

Omni also flies Honolulu-San Francisco and Honolulu-Los Angeles charters for other companies, Zugenbuehler said.

Hawaiian Airlines did $24.2 million worth of charter business in the first half of this year, equal to 8.5 percent of its total revenue for the period. That was down by more than $19 million from $43.6 million in the first half of 2001 because of the cancellation right after Sept. 11 last year of a Los Angeles-Tahiti contract with Renaissance Cruises.

Vacations Hawaii, which used to be Jackie's Travel, is a Honolulu-based Las Vegas travel package retailer that as been taking people to Las Vegas for some 50 years.

Part of publicly traded Boyd Gaming Corp., it had sales of nearly $24 million in the first half of this year, all from package tours sold to people in Hawaii, up from just under $22 million in the first six months of 2001. The company's financial reports do not break out aircraft charters. Revenue figures include hotel rooms and other services.