Hawaiian Airlines has come a long way since the dark days of 2003 when the carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Only two months prior, Mark Dunkerley had taken over as chief executive charged with steering the airline through that turbulent period.
Finally, in June 2005, it emerged from bankruptcy protection, and while it’s hardly been an easy ride since then — for Hawaiian or anyone else in the aviation industry — it has traded its way into a position of growth.
For Dunkerley and Hawaiian, Asia is the overriding long haul focus, Australia included, with Dunkerley describing its strategy as “pretty straightforward”.
“We are an airline that is largely, though not exclusively, focused on selling Hawaii as a destination,” he told Travel Today. “It makes sense for us to look at where visitors to Hawaii are coming from. And it doesn’t take too much clairvoyance to see that with the economic development of Asia, particularly the middle classes, we should expect demand from Asia to grow. We are positioning ourselves to take advantage of that.”
As reported in Friday’s Travel Today, expansion could be on the cards for Australia assuming Hawaiian’s additional frequencies from Sydney and larger aircraft are well received.
But equally, Japan, Hawaii’s largest source market, is a growth target for Hawaiian with its third route, to Fukuoka, set to debut in April.
“We are looking to expand further into Japan,” Dunkerley explained. “We had no routes 18 months ago and now we have two, going on three. It’s a reflection of the success we have enjoyed in Japan that we have been able to build up services so quickly.”
Like Australia, Hawaii has seen numbers from Japan plummet over the past two decades, falling 50% from its high in the 1980s and early 90s. But the “tide has turned”, he said, with a “rediscovery of Japan and its potential.”
South Korea is also a growth market for Hawaiian as, of course, is China, described by Dunkerley as the “imponderable”.
Hawaiian and the US tourism industry in general is facing an impediment in fully exploiting the growth potential from China with visa regulations that are “cumbersome and burdensome” according to Dunkerley.
The convoluted visa process is in start contrast to Australia, he said.
“Whenever I talk about this in the US I always mention Australia as a country that has taken a much more enlightened view and is reaping the rewards because of it,” he said.
Progress is being made, he added, but more needs to be done to ease the process before flights become a realistically commercial prospect.
