HONOLULU -- Hawaiian Airlines became the second of Hawaii's major carriers to announce flights cuts in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The airline said Thursday that it will drop approximately 20 percent of its interisland and mainland schedule beginning Oct. 1. The number of daily interisland flights is being cut from 158 to 123, while more than 20 flights are being dropped from the airline's weekly trans-Pacific schedule. That includes some routes between Kahului and Los Angeles, and Honolulu and Seattle.
"We have no other choice, given the current market conditions and the unpredictabilty of demand," Hawaiian CEO Paul Casey said in a statement.
The airline's current schedule of flights to the South Pacific will not change for the moment, and neither will its charter service to Las Vegas and Anchorage, Alaska.
Hawaiian, the state's largest carrier, is also expected to announce job cuts by the end of this week. The company is hoping to use voluntary programs to reduce the number of necessary layoffs.
"We are working with union leadership to figure out creative ways to ensure a downsizing of labor is not great," Casey said after a meeting Wednesday with Gov. Ben Cayetano and other local business leaders.
Aloha Airlines announced Wednesday that it will lay off 250 workers.
The Honolulu-based carrier said that the cutbacks represent about 8 percent of Aloha's 3,000 employees and will take effect immediately. The layoffs come after the company announced it would eliminate about 25 percent of its daily interisland flights earlier this week.
The lighter schedule takes effect Monday.
"You don't sit around and pray for rain," Aloha CEO Glenn Zander said. "You figure out what you have to do and do it quickly. That's what we did. We cut our flights and yes, there will be people that have to go, and we hope it's temporary."
Zander and Casey were among the business, political and labor leaders who took part in Wednesday's closed-door economic summit with Gov. Ben Cayetano (see
full story) during which he announced several initiatives to keep Hawaii's economy out of recession.
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