Hawaiian Airlines executive vice president and chief revenue officer Brent Overbeek told the Herald the airline remained committed to the market here and would reassess opportunities to scale up.
“While we’re still focused and committed to the New Zealand market, there’s some better opportunities at that time of the year for us to redeploy our assets elsewhere in the network,” Overbeek said.
The airline flies Airbus A330-200 planes, which have 278 seats on the Auckland route.
“Auckland has always been probably our most seasonal international market in terms of month-to-month volatility of traffic heading northbound versus traffic heading southbound. As we get into the northern summer months, that has become a bit more exacerbated,” said Overbeek.
The airline serves four key customer segments - New Zealanders going to Hawaii or connecting through Honolulu to go to 15 cities on the US mainland, American tourists coming from the mainland, and Hawaii residents visiting friends and family in this country.
He said it was fairly well split between the four groups but Kiwi travellers heading northbound to the US were feeling the pain of the relatively weak kiwi dollar against the US dollar (less than 59c today), which means spending money on the ground doesn’t go as far as before the pandemic. Costs of food, accommodation and attractions in Hawaii and the US mainland have also climbed steeply in the past two years.
“Undoubtedly, it has impacted folks’ desire to travel to travel northbound and come to Hawaii. It’s not just a New Zealand phenomenon. In general, we’ve seen that across most of our markets in terms of the strength of the US dollar,” Overbeek said.
Passengers booked on cancelled flights will get a refund, be offered connecting flights from Sydney to Honolulu (which are not affected next winter) and Hawaiian will look at getting its passengers on Air New Zealand flights.
Overbeek said he couldn’t speculate on what the impact of Hawaiian’s withdrawal over winter would have on airfares, which just before the pandemic plunged to less than $500 return.
“We have always been interested in keenly competing in the market and we’re going to do it but just on a seasonal basis for now. And if market conditions change we’ll certainly continue to re-evaluate what our options are in the New Zealand market.”
Hawaiian is one of many airlines whose A321 aircraft, which it uses on flights to the US west coast, have been hit by Pratt & Whitney engine maintenance problems. Overbeek said the decision to pull the A330 out of New Zealand next winter wasn’t related to this.
“This decision’s been in [the] works for a while - it isn’t related to the Pratt & Whitney situation.”
Besides the US mainland and Australia, the airline has a strong presence in Japan, where it flies to four cities, as well as serving Australia, Korea, the Cook Islands and American Samoa.
During the 10 years to March, Hawaiian carried 68,498 passengers from Auckland to Honolulu and 74,455 in the other direction.
The airline has a small, energetic team based in Auckland. Overbeek said the airline was now consulting staff about the changes.
The withdrawal of Hawaiian over winter bucks the trend of the last year when capacity had been poured on to US mainland routes, with Delta Air Lines entering the market and United Airlines adding new services.
Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.
