It has been a long time since Hawaiian has announced a new route, but I’m happy to say that day has finally come again. Hawaiian will begin flying from Honolulu to Raratonga in the Cook Islands starting in May. This may not be a huge move for the airline, but it’s an interesting one nonetheless that showcases the value of the A321neo.
At one point in its history, Hawaiian used to have a relatively robust South Pacific network. That last existed in the early 1990s when, according to Cirium T100 data, the airline flew…
- Honolulu – Apia (Samoa) 1x weekly
- Honolulu – Nuku’alofa (Tonga) 1x weekly
- Honolulu – Pago Pago (American Samoa) 3-4x weekly
- Honolulu – Papeete (Tahiti, French Polynesia) 2x weekly
- Honolulu – Raratonga (Cook Islands) 1x biweekly
- Los Angeles – Pago Pago 1x weekly
- Pago Pago – Apia 1x weekly
- Pago Pago – Nuku’alofa 2x weekly
- Pago Pago – Raratonga 1x biweekly
That is an impressive presence, but to put it in context, here’s the map.
By March of 1993, all of those routes had disappeared except for Honolulu – Pago Pago and Papeete. What happened? This beautiful bird stopped flying…
Dean Faulkner, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hawaiian used its fleet of DC-8-62s to ply the Pacific. The airplane was retired in April 1993 according to T100 data. Those last rotations were between Honolulu and both Pago Pago and Papeete, the two remaining Pacific routes that would transition to other fleets. Everything else just disappeared since only a much larger widebody was available to fly the routes. There just wasn’t enough demand.
With Pago Pago losing all that service to other islands, it was dropped down to 2-3x weekly from Honolulu, first on the L-1011 until July 1994 when the DC-10 took over. In Feb 2003 it moved to the 767-300ER and finally to the A330-200 in Feb 2018. With the service being government-supported, that wasn’t going to go away.
Papeete is a different story since it is commercially supported, I believe. The L-1011 had flown during peak times even when the DC-8s were still around. They took over for good in May 1993, operating 1x weekly. As with Pago Pago, the DC-10 took over in 1994 and the 767 in 2003. But the A330 moved into Papeete much earlier, in Nov 2013. During pre-pandemic times, frequency doubled up to 2x weekly.
After the pandemic, Pago Pago stabilized at 2x weekly with Papeete at 1x weekly, both on the A330.
So, what is bringing on the move to return to Raratonga? There just happens to finally be a smaller narrowbody back in the fleet that can handle the distance.
When Hawaiian bought the A321neo, it wanted to fly to smaller mainland cities from Honolulu that couldn’t support service on bigger widebodies. It also wanted to use the neo on thinner routes that couldn’t support a widebody year-round and to strengthen flying to neighbor islands from the mainland. It was noted as an opportunity but not a priority that Hawaiian could use these to expand its South Pacific network as well.
Raratonga sites 2,926 miles south of Honolulu, just about the same distance as Phoenix. That is well within the A321neo’s range.
Hawaiian will fly the route only once a week on a seemingly-odd schedule. The airplane will leave Honolulu Saturday afternoon at 4pm and arrive Raratonga the same day at 10:25pm. It will then sit for over 24 hours, leaving Raratonga Sunday night at 11:35pm, getting back to Honolulu at 5:50am on Monday morning.
Why sit for 24 hours? It can’t just be crew rest. Pilots can’t fly all the way to Raratonga and then turn back to Honolulu on the same duty day. It’s too far. I would think they could fly back in the morning after an overnight rest, but they aren’t doing that. So I reached out to Hawaiian to ask and it confirmed some of my suspicions.
It was a combination of factors, including a longer stage length and block time (compared with PPT and PPG), crew rest needs associated with the narrowbody, and our desire to ensure a variety of two-way connections.
I figured the crew rest issues had something to do with it. Hawaiian can turn the A330 around on the Papeete trip, but that is an A330 which has flat beds. I’m guessing they can deadhead pilots down in a flat bed and then they can fly it back. The neos, however, don’t have flat beds. Maybe some pilots in the group can confirm if that’s a deal-breaker.
But let’s also not underestimate the last bit there about ensuring two way connections. Going south is easy, most destinations get flights in by mid-day and that will turn just fine into a southbound trip. Going north, however, if it was a morning departure after the shortest possible rest period, then the flight would get in and miss that afternoon bank where the most flights back to the mainland operate. Someone must have decided it was worth it to delay the flight home by about half a day so that it could arrive in the morning and connect back to the mainland same day.
Who that someone is… I wonder. I would be surprised if the Cook Islands wasn’t putting money into this effort. After all, it spends a fair bit keeping Air New Zealand flying from Los Angeles to Raratonga once weekly. Or at least, it did. Air New Zealand had flown that route since 2007. It’s the only Pacific Island flight that remains on the airline to the US, and Air NZ used to have an enormous network there. But, that flight has not flown since the dawn of the pandemic, and it’s hard to know if it will ever return.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Hawaiian is now going to replace Air NZ as the preferred way to get to the US. If the Cooks are funding this, then that means it’s a no-lose situation. Even better, it can be a proving ground for other possible deployments of the neo in the South Pacific. If this works on its own merits, maybe more will come.
