Holiday travel picking up but many seats available
Advertiser Staff and News Services
More people are flying, but air travel still has not recovered from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And while holiday travel demand has picked up, some Hawai'i travelers still may be able to find plenty of room on flights this season.
Associated Press
U.S. airlines estimate that 39.8 million people will travel by plane on holiday trips in the next three weeks, about the same number as were expected to fly during the year-earlier period.
Boeing workers stream out of a plant in Renton, Wash., at the end of their shift. Thousands of Boeing workers, mostly in the Puget Sound area, worked their last shift yesterday as the first round of planned layoffs in the company's commercial airplanes division went into effect. See story.
An average of 1.8 million passengers a day are expected to travel over the 21-day period that begins tomorrow, the Air Transport Association, a trade group representing major U.S. carriers, said on its Web site. Last year, the ATA estimated that 39.6 million passengers would fly over a similar three-week period.
"There is a return to travel," said Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University and co-author of an annual study on airline quality. "Airports are feeling busy again and airlines are saying business is coming back."
But travel remains sluggish on many routes as the holiday travel period comes as airlines face falling passenger numbers after the Sept. 11 attacks made people nervous to fly and increased airport delays.
The nine biggest U.S. airlines said traffic, or miles flown by paying passengers, dropped 20 percent in November over last year, compared to a 26 percent decline in October.
In Hawai'i, airline executives are expecting a mixed, or slightly below-average, holiday travel season as many people stay closer to home.
Takashi Masuko, senior managing director for Japan Airlines in Tokyo, said advance bookings as of this week are off 25 percent from a year ago for the period Dec. 22 to Jan. 6.
The airline, which brings more Asian travelers to Hawai'i than any other carrier, already reduced daily flights to Hawai'i to seven from 11. And those flights are flying at less than 70 percent capacity, down from 90 percent or more during last year's holiday travel season.
"Right now, it's hard for the airline to forecast the future more than a couple of weeks out because in Japan the the wholesalers block off the whole flight and we don't know how full it will actually be until a week or so before," said Gilbert Kimura, a spokesman for JAL in Honolulu.
Reservations to North America fell 31 percent for the Japan Airlines group.
All Nippon, Japan's second biggest carrier, said bookings fell 24 percent to 80,000; it said North American bookings fell 34 percent.
Hawaiian Airlines, the No. 2 carrier between Hawai'i and the West Coast, said its flights will be mostly full for the holiday travel season but that may have to do more with fewer flights than increased demand.
"We are going to be essentially full over the Christmas holiday as is always the case this time of year, but the numbers will be lower than last year primarily because there will be fewer flights," said Keoni Wagner, a spokesman for Hawaiian Airlines.
Wagner said the airline reduced its flights by about 20 percent after the downturn in travel after Sept. 11. He said the booking pace for its Mainland flights is slower than a year ago and the airline is also seeing a drop in demand for interisland travel over the holidays.
"We are seeing a larger change in the interisland traffic and that is primarily because visitors from Japan are still off by 60 percent and we are pretty sure that the local market is not traveling as much as last year," Wagner said.
Aloha Airlines said advance bookings are down 17 percent this month from last December.
"We do expect to have a few full flights but otherwise it's pretty disappointing," said Stu Glauberman. Aloha reduced its flights 25 percent after Sept. 11, but fewer travelers from Asia and little local demand has led to many empty seats.
Glauberman said demand for Aloha's flights to the the West Coast is stronger, with advance bookings near the airline's projections prior to Sept. 11.
United Airlines, the biggest U.S. carrier serving Hawai'i and the No. 1 airline between the islands and the West Coast, said its planes are expected to be full through the first week of January.
"They are packed. We actually have great bookings probably all the way through the end of the first week of January," said Tom Renville, managing director for United's Hawai'i operations.
Because of slow demand following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, United reduced the number of daily flights by two. That means that overall, there will be fewer passenger seats coming to Hawai'i during the holiday season.
"Although we are down two flights, we are not down as many seats because we added higher-gauge aircraft with more seats to the route," Renville said.
Renville said United plans to add back the two canceled flights i one from Los Angeles and one from San Francisco iÊstarting in February.
