Things in the Sky

After United/Continental applied for back-up authority for Haneda service, Hawaiian is giving it a shot, writing to the DOT that “at a minimum, backup authority for the Haneda service current held by Delta and American should be awa¡ded to Hawaiian. If Delta or American do not restart service to Haneda within 90 days as required by the Order, the Department should reallocate at least one of those Haneda slots to Hawaiian.”

If it were to receive the second slot, Hawaiian will use it for a second flight to Honolulu – something for which the carrier has been asking for over a year.

Anyway – Hawaiian packed some very interesting stuff into its filing. Not surprisingly, the carrier reminds the DOT that it was the first airline to launch service to Haneda. But it also notes that load factors have been “averaging over 80 percent” and despite the negative affects of the natural disaster in Japan “the market remains strong.”

Meanwhile, Hawaiian provides an analysis of Delta’s performance at Haneda, especially from Detroit. “Based on the information Hawaiian has received, Delta’s load factor on its flights to Haneda before those events [the earthquake and tsunami] in Japan was quite low,” it says.

Hawaiian also uses MIDT data from February 28 to support its claims, noting these results:

Although Delta was offering service with the same aircraft capacity on both routes, its bookings to Haneda from Detroit were only 41.8% of its bookings to Narita from that same U.S. gateway. Moreover, given Delta’s load factors on its Detroit-Narita route in Ma¡ch 2010, and assuming the same ratio of Haneda to Narita bookings for its flights from Detroit, Delta was facing the prospect of a dìsastrous 38% load factor for its Detroit – Haneda flights in March 2011. The outlook for those flights beyond March was similarly grim..

Hawaiian also claims that “Delta’s advance bookings for its Los Angeles-Narita and Los Angeles-Haneda flights paints a similarly grim picture of the lack of demand and unsustainability of Delta’s LosAngeles-Haneda service.”

So, what does Hawaiian conclude? Take a look (emphasis mine):

This information, taken together with Delta’s commitment to its large hub at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, suggests that Delta may be using the terrible events in Japan as a convenient excuse to suspend its service to Haneda and funnel as much traffic through Narita as possible, thereby reducing its cost per passenger at Narita and also reducing its costs by eliminating, even for  a short  period, its costs of providing service that competes directly with its Narita service.

Before closing, Hawaiian responds to United/Continental’s request for back-up authority, writing that “If Delta can’t fill the seats on its flights to Haneda from Los Angeles, a large U.S. market, it strains credulity to believe that United could fill the seats on daily flights to Haneda from San Francisco, a much smaller market.” I’d imagine United’s response there (at least in the SFO example) its hub at San Francisco is stronger than Delta’s at Los Angeles.