Alaska and Hawaiian Start to Move Metal Around

We’ve seen bits and pieces of Alaska’s plans for its integration with Hawaiian, but this weekend the airline loaded its first major schedule shift. A whole lot of airplanes are moving around, and the end result is much better utilization. Thanks to Cirium data, it was easy for me to take a deeper look with ease.

The headlines you’ve heard are that Hawaiian will start 1x daily from Seattle to Tokyo/Narita and next summer it will fly 2x daily on Seattle – Anchorage. That is indeed true, all with A330s. The Narita flight is being shifted from Honolulu to Seattle. And on Seattle – Anchorage, Alaska is able to take those two A330 flights and have them replace four 737s. But that was just the beginning.

Let’s take a look at a map of all flying west of the Rockies to Hawaiʻi on both Alaska and Hawaiian. I’ll explain the colors down below.

^{Map was created using Doughton Data Solutions service. doughtondata.com
© OpenStreetMap, stock.adobe.com}

The lines in gray show routes where there is no frequency or aircraft change, and only one airline is currently operating the route anyway. Just ignore those for now, but I wanted to just show the scale of how many routes there are in the combined network.

All of those pinkish routes are ones that have now been abandoned by Alaska and are being completely operated by Hawaiian.

• LAX – Honolulu goes from 2x daily Hawaiian A330s, 1x daily Hawaiian 787, and 1x daily Alaska 737 to 1x daily Hawaiian A330, 2x daily Hawaiian 787s, and 1x daily Hawaiian A321
• LAX – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A330 remains as is
• Portland (OR) – Honolulu goes from 1x daily Alaska 737 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 3x daily Hawaiian A321s
• San Diego – Honolulu goes from 1x daily Alaska 737 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 2x daily Hawaiian A321s
• San Francisco – Honolulu goes from 2x daily Alaska 737s and 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 1x daily Hawaiian A330
• San Francisco – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is
• San Jose – Honolulu has its 1x daily Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is
• San Jose – Kahului has its 1x weekly Alaska 737 canceled while the 1x daily Hawaiian A321 remains as is

On the surface, this is a mixed bag. In some cases, it is a clear decrease in capacity, like on San Jose or San Francisco to Honolulu. In other cases, this is just an optimizing of aircraft, as is the case in San Diego. And still elsewhere, this is a real benefit, as we saw with Portland – Honolulu going from 2x to 3x daily flights. (Though if you like the flat bed, you won’t be happy there… it’s gone.) We’ll talk about that more later.

The dark blue routes are those which go in the opposite direction, switching to being operated solely by Alaska.

• Portland (OR) – Kahului goes from 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 1x daily Alaska 737 to 2x daily Alaska 737s
• LAX – Kona goes from 1x daily Hawaiian A330 to 1x daily Alaska 737

This is not a long list. Presumably, this is just beneficial for routing purposes in the early days since we know in the long run everything will be operated under the Hawaiian brand.

We also have two new routes joining the network, both San Francisco – Līhu’e (3x weekly) and Kona (4x weekly) will run on Alaska 737s.

Finally, we have two Seattle routes that will remain mixed.

• Seattle – Honolulu already had two of its six daily Alaska 737s converted to Hawaiian A330s. Now there will be a third Hawaiian A330 and 1x daily Hawaiian A321. Two Alaska 737s remain.
• Seattle -Kahului doesn’t change, but it will (for now) keep 1x daily Hawaiian A321 and 3x daily Alaska 737s.

This isn’t just about the aircraft type, but it’s also about flight times. For example, Portland had departures to Honolulu at 8:05am on Alaska and 10:50am on Hawaiian with returns that overlapped at 1pm and 2:10pm. Now it will have departures at 7am, 10:25am, and 5:55pm to Honolulu with returns now spread out at 8:10am, 1:35pm, and 10pm. There is much more choice for customers, but this also lets the airline utilize its airplanes better.

Maybe that’s not the best example since it actually gets an additional flight in the market. How about Portland – Kahului? It had flights to Maui at 7am and 9:45am with returns at 12:50pm and 4:35pm. Now it will fly at 7:45am and 5:45pm with returns at 11:40am and 9:40pm. That’s more choice for customers based on flight times alone.

Even in markets that lose frequency, it’s usually just overlapping flight times anyway. Look at San Francisco – Honolulu which drops from three to two daily. It had departures to Honolulu at 9:50am, 11:25am, and 5:59pm with returns at 1:10pm, 1:30pm, and 9:35pm. Now it’ll have flights at 9:35am and 7:45pm to Honolulu and back at 1:30pm and 9:20pm. The time-of-day coverage is basically the same, but this enables Alaska to get much better utilization out of the fleet.

Most of the Hawaiian A321s, as an example, fly from the islands in the afternoon, arriving on the mainland in the evening. Then they stay overnight and fly back in the morning. With the ability to support multiple frequencies in more markets, Alaska can run airplanes in late morning to the mainland where they can turn in the evening, then come back on a redeye and be ready for a morning westbound.

I had thought that Alaska would be increasing utilization of the aircraft once they got to the mainland, but that’s probably not easy to do until the airlines are combined and have a single pilot workgroup. Then there will be opportunity to squeeze even more out. (And if you’re reading, Alaska, we could use a flight from Long Beach up to Seattle… there’s gotta be a slot we can find. Just sayin’.)

Of course, you can’t just schedule these airplanes to fit the operation perfectly without thinking about the commercial side of the equation. Yes, the bar will probably be lower now that unit costs should go down. And yes, with multiple frequencies, there is more interest in having varying flight times. That’s especially true when you take connectivity into account from the rest of the mainland. It’s a bet I would take, but the proof will be in the pudding.