HONOLULU -- Hawaiian Airlines is asking a bankruptcy judge for permission to temporarily stop paying millions of dollars into its pilots' pension plan.

The airline filed for bankruptcy in March. It said it will not have the cash to emerge from bankruptcy unless it's allowed to avoid paying more than $45 million into its pilots' retirement fund over the next two years.

Hawaiian said the pension benefits for its 333 pilots will not change.

"What we are going to do is work with the pilots to figure out how we can resolve this. Other airlines have done so, with much larger underfundings than we have. And we will too," Hawaiian bankruptcy trustee Joshua Gotbaum said.

Hawaiian said its pension fund is "seriously underfunded" with $99 million in assets and $166 million in liabilities.

Hawaiian said low interest rates, a bad stock market and the drop in travel following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, hit all airlines hard. It said the airline pension plans nationwide are underfunded by $18 billion.