Comments on: Hawaiian Picks Up Oakland - Honolulu

By: Greg N

Greg N — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:08:57 +0000

Too bad Hawaiian can’t bring their 767’s into SNA. AQ had a nice little niche there. A very affluent market willing to pay more to avoid LAX.

By: Jared

Jared — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:01:15 +0000

I hear what you’re saying, but just because a route isn’t profitable for one airline doesn’t mean it isn’t profitable for another. You make a good point that likely only a handful of those routes will return, but the implication from the pro-consolidation folks is that once you pull a route, no one will ever fill it. I think the reality is more complicated.

By: Seth

Seth — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:40:33 +0000

One route reappearing out of the dozen or so that were lost is hardly groundbreaking. Where there are profitable routes carriers will come back in and keep the capacity there. The fact is that many of the airlines shutting down just could not string together enough profitable routes to handle the burden of their other routes. I would imagine that some other ATA routes might also get picked up, though most were already covered by competition, so there isn’t much to poach. This actually may have been the only route that disappeared with the ATA and Aloha bankruptcies. If capacity goes down but the routes remained covered odds are that the airlines will be able to increase fares, which is what they want.