Posted on: Saturday, March 31, 2001

Northwest Airlines cuts Honolulu-San Francisco service

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

A decline in profits is behind Northwest Airlines' plans to end its daily flight between Honolulu and San Francisco, but the airline said it will compensate by beefing up its daily Minneapolis-to-Honolulu service.

Flight 928 to San Francisco, which leaves at 9:30 p.m., will cease May 1. The flight, Northwest's only daily flight between San Francisco and Hawai'i, is proving less profitable than other routes, airline officials said yesterday.

"The profitability of those flights has been diminished over the last several months," said Doug Killian, Northwest spokesman in the company's Minnesota headquarters. "Planes are scarce resources, and we need to reallocate them in markets that produce better results."

Flights 920 and 921, to and from Minneapolis, will become year-round flights. They are currently only offered four months per year during the winter season.

Northwest announced the Minneapolis flights last fall. The flights began in mid-December and were originally scheduled to run through April, the end of the high-demand winter season.

Meanwhile, Northwest Flight 932 to Los Angeles, which leaves at 11 p.m., will cease for the summer season on April 23. The airline will keep one flight per day to and from Los Angeles. The change is a normal seasonal shift, Killian said.

Nani Mahoe, Northwest's director of Hawai'i sales, said the moves are part of a not-yet-announced corporate change for the Eagan, Minn.-based airline.

"The loss of those two flights is not because we're unhappy with Hawai'i, but because our overall strategy is changing," Mahoe said.

Northwest is one of the Islands' largest carriers, with about seven flights a day to Hawai'i, five from the Mainland and two from Japan.