Oct
16
Republic Airways, in an alliance with Mokulele Airlines, has decided to make four short-range jets available to the local carrier so it can fly from Honolulu to both Kona and Lihue beginning Nov. 17, in direct competition with Hawaiian Airlines and Mesa Air’s go! interisland service.
Until now Mokulele has been flying seven Cessna Grand Caravans under the brand names go!Express and Aloha Air Cargo Express. It’s an exciting new venture for Mokulele, which was a sleepy Big Island charter service until acquired by Bill Boyer, the inventor of those laptop entertainment systems you can rent on Hawaiian Airlines transpacific flights.
For most of our flying history, Hawaii has been able to support two main interisland carriers but not three. Each third party carrier died trying to change that after a protracted fare war in which all the carriers were wounded. The scenario played out differently last time, when Mesa Air’s little Go division managed to execute its plan to put the legacy carrier Aloha Airlines out of business with a little help from soaring fuel prices and prosecutors who don’t know predatory pricing when it’s spelling out in an email.
Now, less than a year after vanquishing Aloha, go! finds itself in the position of legacy carrier, sort of, with an upstart that has the same advantage it originally had, a deep-pocketed mainland airline backing the play.
Mesa Air makes most of its living flying regional service as a subcontractor for United Airlines, US Airways and Delta, though Delta canceled some business over performance concerns.
Republic does the same thing, and for more carriers, including American, United, Delta, Continental and US Airways. That’s all of the big six except Northwest, which soon will be part of Delta anyway.
Though go! was smaller than Aloha, its parent company was bigger, so it was able to lose money for years while the fare war bled Aloha’s cash. Now it faces competition from an airline that can stand up to that.
But there’s more. Mokulele will fly four Embraer jets that seat 70 passengers. These planes are bigger and faster than what go! flies, while being smaller and more fuel-efficient than what Hawaiian flies.
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[...] that Mokulele is starting a new battle in the inter-island air fare war, I sure hope go! is the next casualty of that war. I know its [...]