Hawaiian Airlines on Monday announced a new daily nonstop service between Honolulu International Airport and Narita International Airport in Tokyo, which is expected to land Hawaii with an additional $130 million in visitor spending.
The new service will take off on July 22 next year.
“Japan is Hawaii’s largest international market with arrivals from the market making up 18 percent of total arrivals to the state in 2014,” George Szigeti, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, said in a statement. “Hawaiian Airlines’ daily flight from Narita to Honolulu is projected to contribute an annual $130 million in visitor spending and $14.7 million in state tax revenue.
“With the recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking to expand pre-clearance operations at Narita, this flight will provide additional service from one of our core markets.”
This is Hawaiian Airline Inc’s (Nasdaq: HA) 11th international destination and its fourth to Japan. The airline already operates daily flights to Tokyo Haneda Airport, Osaka Airport and Sapporo Airport.
“We’ve had the pleasure of carrying more than 800,000 visitors between Haneda and Honolulu since the launch of our daily A330 service more than five years ago,” said Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian’s president and chief executive officer. “With average load factors routinely exceeding 90 percent, it is clear Japanese travelers have chosen Hawaiian as their carrier of choice when visiting our beautiful islands.”
There are currently only four routes between the U.S. and Haneda. Delta Air Lines Inc. has been in a dispute with American Airlines Group Inc. about the rights to fly to the airport. Delta gave up one of those routes to American in June after a fight between the two airlines. However, it has since argued that its rival should cede the route after it didn’t start service within 60 days. The U.S. Department of Transportation has given American until March 27 to begin the flights to Haneda airport.
Hawaiian’s new Tokyo flight will take off from Honolulu at 3:30 p.m. and land in Narita at 7 p.m. the following day. The return fight will leave Narita at 9 p.m. and arrive at Honolulu at 9:55 a.m. the same day, after crossing the international dateline.
Pacific Business News
Hawaiian Airlines
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Hawaiian Airlines has unveiled a cabin redesign on its fleet of Airbus A330-200s featuring 18 lie-flat premium cabin seats.
The airline will also install 28 more “extra comfort” economy seats, bringing its total to 68 premium economy seats on A330-200s. Its A330-200s will go from 294 seats to 278 total seats. Hawaiian has 21 A330-200s in its fleet and will add one more by the end of 2015.
The cabin redesign will start in the second quarter of 2016 and is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2017. “I think there will be a tendency to have [redesigned A330s] on our international routes first,” Hawaiian president and CEO Mark Dunkerley said Oct. 19 when announcing the cabin redesign to reporters during the carrier’s global media day at the company’s Honolulu headquarters.
Despite having fewer total seats on its A330s, “we think that yields as a whole will likely go up,” Dunkerley added. “We did extensive modeling to figure out what would be the optimum configuration for the markets we serve.”
The “extra comfort” seats have a 36-inch pitch while the economy seats will continue to have a 31-inch pitch.
ATW – Air Transport World