Hawaiian restarting
service to AustraliaThe carrier will offer four
nonstop flights a week
to Sydney debuting in May
Hawaiian Airlines is bringing back nonstop flights between Honolulu and Sydney, Australia, in an effort to recover the Australian tourism market, which has dwindled since the early 1990s.
Hawaiian said yesterday it will begin flying four times a week to Sydney, Australia's largest city, on May 17, pending government approvals. Hawaiian will use its relatively new 767-300 jets, which can seat 252 passengers on the 10-hour flights.
Australia's Qantas and bankrupt Air Canada fly between Hawaii and Sydney. Hawaiian's service will open up Honolulu as a gateway for U.S. West Coast travelers, the company said. Australia, which has a population of 20 million people, is the fifth biggest economy in Asia.
Mark Dunkerley, president and chief operating officer of Hawaiian, pointed out that the Australian economy has been doing well and the value of the Australian dollar has strengthened against the weak U.S. dollar.
Australia's dollar hit a 6 1/2 year high against the U.S. dollar Tuesday, and was recently buying about 77 U.S. cents, compared with less than 50 cents in April 2001. The country's economy added 29,600 jobs in December, and the jobless rate remained at a 14-year low of 5.6 percent.
Hawaiian already flies to American Samoa, which is several hundred miles east of Australia, as well as to Papeete, Tahiti, in the South Pacific. Hawaiian is seeking to make inroads in Asia, and the Australia flight is a first step.
"It's a very important developmental objective to us," Dunkerley said.
Hawaiian's local competitor, Aloha Airlines, recently applied to start its first U.S. West Coast-East Coast flights, between Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., and John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif. Aloha, in addition to its interisland and mainland flights, flies to the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands and American Samoa.
Hawaiian flew to Sydney once a week for a couple of years in the late 1980s, using DC-8 planes via American Samoa. In 1990, Northwest Airlines took over the routes because it wasn't economically feasible for Hawaii. "The market didn't support the operation," Hawaiian spokesman Keoni Wagner said.
After 1990, airlines began overflying Hawaii, for various reasons, rather than stopping here between North America and Australia, Wagner said.
Hawaii's Australian arrivals went from 237,808 visitors in 1990 to fewer than 70,000 visitors in 1998, and have since come back to 91,911 arrivals in 2002, according to the most recent state data. That still represents only 1.4 percent of the 6.4 million total visitors who came here in 2002.
The numbers illustrate there is potential for the market to come back, Gov. Linda Lingle said yesterday at a press conference where Hawaiian announced the new flights.
Hawaiian hopes to bring in 34,000 passengers a year itself, generating $42 million in Hawaii visitor spending and $3.5 million in tax revenue for the state, Dunkerley said.
Hawaiian, based in Honolulu, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy last year after it could not negotiate $20 million in concessions from its aircraft lessors. The company is aiming to emerge from bankruptcy this summer.