Hawaiian Airlines positions Honolulu as gateway to the US - avoiding those long queues at LAX

WITH record numbers of Australians visiting the US last year, one American airline is moving to take full advantage.

Hawaiian Airlines offers Australians an alternate route into the mainland US.

WITH record numbers of Australians visiting the US last year, one of America’s fastest growing international carriers is moving to take full advantage.

While other US carriers have sought bankruptcy protection or merged with competitors, Hawaiian Airlines has expanded rapidly.

Its international routes now account for 30 per cent of the airline’s total revenue.

This is up from 7 per cent only a few years ago.

Much of this has been credited to investing in growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region since emerging from its own bankruptcy problems in June 2005.

“The international strategy has been very successful for them,” Pacific Aviation Consulting managing director Oliver Lamb said.

“They’ve demonstrated good management and a clear sense of their purpose.”

Australia has been a key part of this Asia-Pacific expansion, with the development of the airline’s services to Sydney and Brisbane also mirroring a resurgence in the number of Australians visiting Hawaii and the continental US.

Hawaii Tourism figures show arrivals from Australia exceeded 300,000 for the first time in 2013, up 24 per cent from 2012, while the total number of Australians visiting the US hit 1.19 million last year.

Hawaiian Airlines, which has cast itself firmly as a leisure carrier, now operates daily Sydney-Honolulu flights.

Last November, Hawaiian Airlines started flying to Brisbane and will increase the number of weekly services to four from March 31.

The airline has focused primarily on traffic between Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, offering travellers an industry-leading baggage allowance of 64kg a person.

It has also introduced the “Ala Moana Shopping Passport” scheme entitling shoppers to discounts of up to 20 per cent at the Ala Moana Center in central Waikiki, the world’s largest outdoor shopping mall.

“There is not another airline serving Australia that has that allowance and it is one of the key selling points,” Hawaiian Airlines senior director of sales for Oceania, Dan Burruss, said.

However, with the expansion of its long-haul fleet of A330 aircraft and the development of its US network to include 11 mainland cities, Hawaiian Airlines is increasingly turning its attention to offering Australians an alternative means to enter the continental US to avoid the long queues and delays typically encountered in Los Angeles.

“We reckon that clearing immigration and customs in Honolulu is much easier than it is in LAX (Los Angeles),” he said. “It’s (also) just a good place to break the trip, particularly if you’re going on to New York.”

About 20 per cent of the airline’s passengers now travel with it to mainland US, substantially up from when the airline started the strategy.

Apart from New York, Hawaiian Airlines offers flights to popular and emerging West Coast destinations, such as Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas and the San Francisco Bay area, along with free stopovers in Hawaii.

On the Australia-Honolulu route, Hawaiian Airlines’ primary competition is budget carrier Jetstar and its full-service parent Qantas, with the standard of its in-flight service targeted somewhere between the two.

Virgin Australia, United Airlines and Delta are also competitors on the increasingly competitive trans-Pacific route.

“It’s a great option to reach the US and also very attractive for those wanting to break their trip and spend some beach relaxation time in Hawaii on the return trip,” Brand USA strategy director Joe Ponte said.

The writer travelled to Las Vegas courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines.

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