Dave Karp, vice president and chief operating officer for Alaskan/Hawaiian Vacations, said he expects demand to fill Aloha's 124-seat, 737-700 each week.

"In the summer, we have lots and lots of local folks coming up here to fish and sight-see," Karp said. "There's a huge community of Hawaiians up here and there are a lot of Alaskans who spend their winters in Hawai'i and have property over there.

"When you take the weather out of the picture, there's a lot of commonality ­ beautiful scenery, we even have the same whales and, of course, strong native culture in both places. ..." he said. "We also have Australians, New Zealanders and Japanese coming through Honolulu to get to Alaska, rather than go through the West Coast."

The flights will leave Honolulu at noon on Tuesdays and depart Anchorage International on Wednesdays at 9:35 a.m. The 2,777-mile flight takes 5 hours and 40 minutes. In the summer, Alaska is two hours ahead of Hawai'i time.

Alaskan/Hawaiian Vacations flies most of its passengers on Hawaiian Airlines DC-10s. But Hawaiian Airlines had availability problems for the new, mid-week charter flights and Alaskan/Hawaiian also wanted a smaller plane, Karp said.