Hawaiian Airlines may fly direct from Melbourne to Honolulu

Hawaiian Airlines is mulling flying direct from Melbourne to Honolulu next year after Jetstar pulled out of Brisbane

A Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330 - the aircraft that flies on Sydney and Brisbane routes

Hawaiian Airlines is considering flying direct from Melbourne to Honolulu next year after its low-cost rival Jetstar pulled out of Brisbane due to the weaker Australian dollar and intense competition from the Pacific carrier.

Qantas-owned Jetstar this week confirmed it would abandon its three-services-a-week Brisbane-Honolulu route from November, deciding instead to pursue more profitable flights to Bali and Phuket.

“Despite the lower dollar, the Honolulu routes continue to perform well for both Qantas and Jetstar,” a Jetstar spokesman said. “But it’s fair to say we’ve seen a moderate dip in demand out of Brisbane and we believe it is the right time to move this capacity to Asia, where more Australians want to travel.”

The exit of Jetstar from Brisbane means Hawaiian remains the only carrier to fly direct to Honolulu from the Queensland capital.

“Brisbane has been a good market for us and it’s an important market, but’s it is also a small market. So it wasn’t entirely shocking that Jetstar decided to refocus its resources elsewhere,” Peter Ingram, Hawaiian Airlines chief commercial officer told The Australian.

“We think we have the right customer proposition to Hawaii from Australia.

“We’ve seen great response and we have grown the business over the 10-plus years that we have been serving Australia, and we look to continuing opportunities to grow.”

As Mr Ingram committed to serving Brisbane for the long term, he also said Hawaiian was looking to capture more of the market flying to its namesake and had placed Melbourne on a shortlist with five other destinations that it wanted to fly to in the future.

“Melbourne is clearly one market that is on that list. It is one of a number of markets on our drawing board for the future,” he said.

But while Melbourne — where Jetstar has a monopoly on Honolulu flights — has long been on Hawaiian Airlines’ list of potential new destinations, Mr Ingram said it was highly unlikely the carrier would fly the route this year.

“We consider Melbourne in the mix with other opportunities and look forward to a day, hopefully not too far down the road, where it will bubble to the top of our list. Maybe next year. We haven’t finalised all of our 2017 plans yet.

“The Australian market has been very good to us … and we think there is opportunity for continued growth. It’s just a matter of where it ranks against other opportunities we are looking at.” ­Hawaiian Airlines has been scaling up its commercial operations in Australia and now has 10 permanent staff based in Sydney.

The airline offers daily flights from Sydney and four times a week from Brisbane, while Jetstar flies to Hawaii five times a week from Sydney and up to seven times a week in peak season. Qantas also flies five times a week from Sydney.

But the fluctuating dollar has caused some pain for passengers flying to Honolulu.

“There are certainly some challenges with the exchange rate,” Mr Ingram said.

“Like any airline we have a lot of US-dollar expenses.

“We have seen it impact more on yields with the average fare routes being lower, but traffic has held up fairly well.

“I think that’s a tribute to the continued resilience of the ­Australian economy, even as the commodities cycle has cooled.”

Despite the fluctuating dollar, Australian visitors to Hawaii continue to climb. Arrivals last year from Australia jumped nearly 8 per cent.

Japanese tourists continue to be the island-state’s largest visitor group with about one million ­travellers last year, but Australia is in second place with 334,000 ­tourists.