Hawaiian flew 25% more people in April

Despite drastically increasing interisland capacity and adding a route to Manila last month, Hawaiian Airlines said yesterday its percentage of available seats filled remained on par with last year.

The airline, which increased its interisland seat capacity about 50 percent from last month after the shutdown of ATA and Aloha Airlines, said its load factor, or the percent of available seats filled, was 88 percent in April, up from 87.8 percent last year.

Mesa Air Group has not yet released April statistics for interisland carrier go!

Hawaiian now operates about 4,500 more daily interisland seats than before Aloha closed its passenger operations on March 31, spokesman Keoni Wagner said.

"We put on the right amount of capacity to accommodate the demand," he said. "We carry 25 percent more passengers on the average flights with the same load factor as the year before."

Hawaiian also launched its nonstop service to Manila on April 14, departing Honolulu four days a week using a Boeing 767, which seats up to 264 passengers. The carrier's service to Oakland, Calif., didn't start until May.

In April, Hawaiian served 718,767 passengers, while recording revenue passenger miles -- one paying passenger transported one mile -- of 684.7 million and available seat miles -- one seat transported one mile -- of 777.8 million.

The state hasn't yet compiled April data for other trans-Pacific carriers, said Marsha Wienert, state tourism liaison.

"Everyone was saying it was difficult for people to get seats, which meant that load factors were probably really high," she said.