Alaska and Hawaiian Make Their First Network Moves to Boost Flows

The Alaska/Hawaiian merger has been a done deal for over a month, but it’s all been quiet so far. That is now beginning to change. In advance of the combined airline’s investor day next month, it has made it first network adjustments, swapping operators on two routes. This isn’t much just yet, but it is the lowest-hanging fruit. To me, this shows some of the easy gains that can be made by combining these two carriers.

San Diego – Kahului

This is a route that Alaska has flown since October 2010, usually 1x daily but occasionally more during summer. Hawaiian flew the route before that time with a 767-300ER, but it pulled out when Alaska came in. It was just too much capacity in the market to make sense. But once Hawaiian acquired the A321neo, that was the perfect airplane to go back in. Hawaiian restarted the route in summer 2018, and it has flown 1x daily since (with a COVID break). Southwest tried to fly it back in June 2021, but that only lasted a year before ending.

In other words, this is at best a two-flight route, and Alaska and Hawaiian were the two to operate those flights more consistently. This might have been good from a competitive standpoint, but it didn’t offer much variety for travelers with time preferences.

Though departures times have varied, it’s always been a morning flight westbound with an afternoon return for both airlines. This past summer had Hawaiian departing San Diego around 7am with Alaska at about 10:30am. The returns were both leaving Kahului around 10:30am. For next summer, Hawaiian shifted. The two flights were a mere 10 minutes depart at 10:10am and 10:20am westbound.

While it is true that the traditional California preference for flights to the islands is to go in the morning to Maui and then return in the afternoon, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who prefer something different. And for the first time, this combined schedule will take connecting opportunities into account.

Hawaiian’s flight has been replaced with an Alaska flight. But instead of operating on the same pattern, Alaska will have this second flight go in the late afternoon westbound — at 5:40pm — and then return on a redeye departing at 11pm.

This will help Alaska to feed connecting banks in San Diego. The late evening arrival in San Diego connects to nothing save two redeyes to JFK and Orlando respectively. This new flight has departures to Atlanta, Boston, Bozeman, Las Vegas, New York/JFK, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Rosa, and Tampa within 2 hours of arriving in San Diego.

While it’s nice to have those choices, what’s most interesting to me is the operational benefit. See, before, Hawaiian would fly the airplane out from Kahului and then it would sit overnight before coming back to Maui in the morning. The airline had to wait long enough to ensure crew rest requirements were met, but it also meant waiting long enough for the return to be at a commercially viable time. That is the problem with a Hawaiʻi-based airplane.

But now you can take an Alaska airplane that is coming out of San Diego. Thereʻs a good chance this can be an airplane that was going to just sit there overnight before. But now, it can head to Maui and turn around, getting back early enough to work a full day around the mainland.

This is the kind of efficiency thatʻs particularly appealing in this merger. And it is a win for customers who prefer having time options or who need to rely on good connecting opportunities.

Seattle – Honolulu

The other change made over the weekend is also about connecting traffic, but it is at the expense of operational efficiency. During summer, Alaska has been flying five (!) daily flights between Seattle and Honolulu. Hawaiian has one A330 during the typical morning westbound/afternoon eastbound window.

Now, one of those Alaska 737s will turn into a Hawaiian A330. In this case, itʻs the mid-afternoon departure going west at 3:55pm with the early redeye going east at 9:30pm.

This isnʻt about giving passengers more choice. They already had the same choices before, but now itʻs just a bigger airplane. Presumably having the widebody in the morning is great, but the expectation of increased demand on a later flight thanks to the meshing of the two networks makes this a good idea as well.

You now have the ability to connect people from Honolulu all throughout the US if youʻre Hawaiian, something that only Alaska could do before. San Diego was nice, and the extra traffic can help profitability, but it’s Seattle that has the real connecting hub with massive banks all over the country. With Hawaiian’s power in the islands, there need to be more seats than Alaska can offer today.

Operationally, itʻs more of a wildcard. Hawaiian will now have the traditional flight that comes into Seattle at night and turns in the morning, but it will also have this second flight that arrives in the morning and then sits around all day before returning in the late afternoon.

It is possible Hawaiian could do something different. It could have the redeye turn to the morning westbound flight, but then the other airplane would arrive in the evening and sit for 24 hours. There is no great way to route these airplanes efficiently on this schedule. So it means one of three things.

1. Alaska has future plans to send that airplane somewhere else from Seattle within the mainland
2. Itʻs going to take advantage of maintenance opportunities. Seattle is where Hawaiian has done A330 maintenance anyway.
3. With Asia demand down so much thanks to the weak yen, Hawaiian doesnʻt really have a place to put these A330s profitably right now anyway. This would mean itʻs not a problem to just sit the airplane for awhile in Seattle. The revenue benefit is stronger.

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None of these opportunities exist without the merger. The flexibility of different bases means that Alaska/Hawaiian can move airplanes around to create better schedules with different aircraft types, and thatʻs good news for everyone.