New Vegas charter
taking offHonolulu-based TM Travel plans
regular flights starting Sept. 22
The name Jackie's is coming back to Las Vegas charter tours. A new contract by a local firm using that name will fly people from Honolulu to the gaming city on a World Airways aircraft.
TM Travel, doing business as Jackie's and listed as Jackie's in the Honolulu telephone directory, has signed a contract with World Airways worth $70 million.
Its first trip will be a package for the University of Hawaii/University of Nevada-Las Vegas football game to be played Sept. 19.
Jackie's first regular charter will leave Honolulu Sept. 22 and return Sept. 26. The minimum price is $359 for round-trip airfare, four nights in a hotel and some meals, said Michael Tanaka, president of TM Travel.
The World Airways plane involved is a widebody MD-11, reconfigured to provide more leg room and more space per passenger and carrying 302 people in coach class and 34 in business.
Tanaka said his company intends to start slow and build up business over time. The plan is to move up to a couple of flights a week later this year and eventually as many as five a week, he said.
World Airways, based in Peachtree City, Ga., and known in Hawaii as a military charter contractor during the Vietnam war, said Jackie's is expected to pay $7.3 million this year for the charters and $31 million for each of 2004 and 2005. There is an option for the company to renew the charter for a period beyond 2005, World Airways said.
The original Jackie's Travel, started in 1985 by retired Hilo school teacher Jack Kitagawa, became the largest packager of Las Vegas air-hotel-meals tours for Hawaii residents and was sold to Boyd Gaming Co. in 1997. The Jackie's Travel name went with it.
Boyd, which owns a number of casino hotels in Las Vegas and elsewhere, had purchased another Hawaii Las Vegas packager, Vacations Hawaii, in 1995.
Boyd representatives reached yesterday declined to comment on the new charter operator.
Tanaka said TM Travel is still the Kitagawa family's business, having grown from an agency owned by Jack Kitagawa's sisters, but Tanaka owns the Jackie's business.
Las Vegas charters are popular among Hawaii residents. In the first half of this year, Boyd Gaming showed airline-hotel revenues of $24 million from its Hawaii-Las Vegas business. Its Vacations Hawaii unit runs five flights a week on the route. Its four-night, air and hotel packages start at $339.
