Holiday travelers advisory

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Travel agent Gloria Keller had a reservation for a 3 p.m. flight home to Honolulu from the Big Island on a Monday a few weeks ago, but she finished her work early and headed for the Kona Airport thinking she'd hop on an earlier flight.

Lines at Honolulu International Airport have gotten longer because of more thorough security screening, now operated by the federal government. Passengers are urged to budget more time for boarding flights. Advertiser library photo

"Every single flight was jammed," Keller says. "It was a huge mess, very congested, with everybody pushing to get through the gates ..."

It sounds almost like — heaven forbid — the Mainland. And Keller's experience is being repeated daily throughout the Islands.

Things have changed forever in the airline industry since 9/11, and in special ways in Hawai'i, where a combination of factors will give interisland travelers ample opportunity to practice their aloha this holiday season.

If you haven't traveled much in the past year, but are getting ready to visit someone for the holidays, be warned: Everything is more complicated and takes longer.

Don't expect to call for reservations a couple of days ahead of time, to breeze onto whatever flight happens to be leaving when you arrive, or to change reservations at the last minute because you decide to stay longer at Tutu's.

One of the changes, of course, is the increased security screening. To insure better screening, the federal government has taken over responsibility for the airlines' security checks. You can expect to be thoroughly screened at least once, and possibly as many as three times, before boarding a flight.

"They are very, very professional," said Keller, a travel consultant at HNL Travel in Honolulu, "But it takes time, and there's a ripple effect," meaning things move more slowly all the way back to the ticketing lobby, where you may encounter long, slow-moving lines.

"You not only get screened to get into the holding area, but then they can — and do — pull you out again to be screened just before the flight. It may be random, or profiling, but I am very blonde and I seem to get picked out every time," she said.

Keller also was one of thousands of interisland travelers experiencing the effects of a cooperative tightening of schedules by Hawaiian and Aloha airlines in an effort to make interisland business profitable, cutting back schedules so as to fill up planes instead of flying with empty seats.

The airline she was flying had removed from its schedule a direct flight from Kona to Maui, and suddenly travelers found themselves routed to Maui through Honolulu.

Fewer flights

Neighbor Islanders are buzzing about the fact that flights are fewer and farther between. In general, you'll find fewer flights in the middle of the day, between the morning and evening rush hours. Airports such as Kahului and Kona that were served by a couple of O'ahu flights an hour are down to one an hour during much of the week.

Special federal rule changes allow the two Hawai'i carriers to calculate in advance the expected "airline seat miles" or ASMs needed for a month, and then agree to split those 50-50. Formerly, to compete, each airline would fly with partly filled aircraft because it wanted to make sure it could offer customers flights at their desired times.

The other ingredient in the "huge mess" at Kona that day was a holiday; it was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the number of people flying had increased sharply, as usual. Christmas and New Year's promise more of the same.

"The holidays are still the holidays," Aloha spokesman Stu Glauberman said.

A lot of flights will be filled to capacity. The best advice, both interisland carriers say, is to book as soon as you know you'll be traveling.

And because reservation telephone lines can become clogged, Glauberman said, "the best thing people can do is go online to check our schedule and book their tickets."

The process is not only convenient, it also will get you a five percent discount on Aloha fares, he said.

The new security requirements, added to the normal holiday rush, increase the need for planning ahead, Glauberman said.

"We urge people to be patient, to leave extra time for parking, drop off, check-in, screening and every step along the way during this busy season," he said.

Aloha's early-December schedule provides about 15 percent fewer seats than earlier this year, but on Friday the airline will increase the number of flights to all airports for the holiday season, he said.

The carriers say they have calculated into their "seat-sharing" planning the normal increase in interisland travel during the holidays. They are adding flights to the schedule and are backing up the existing schedule with additional aircraft on high-demand flights.

Hawaiian scheduled more seats for December than in November, a normal holiday increase. It will be able to accommodate the Christmas rush within its allotted share because early December is usually less busy than the second half of the month, Hawaiian spokesman Keoni Wagner said.

Reservations urged

Both airlines acknowledge the schedule is getting tighter, and said customers who book as far in advance as possible are more likely to get the flights they want.

"We had someone call to report that a customer was complaining they couldn't get a flight between two dates in December," Wagner said. "We checked, and it turned out that there were plenty of seats available, but not at the exact hour or the price this particular customer wanted."

As Glauberman said when Aloha announced recently that it was reducing fares for people who book seven days in advance, and increasing them for almost everyone else, "the day of running up to the interisland counter in Hawai'i at the last minute and booking a flight on any airplane available is coming to an end."

Change in destination

Wagner said local interisland customers benefited for years from the fact that most flights arriving in Hawai'i came into Honolulu. Passengers then booked flights to other islands. Local passengers piggybacked on the flights scheduled for those visitors.

Now that many flights from both the Mainland and Japan go directly to Neighbor Island airports, the frequency of interisland flights from Honolulu has declined, he said.

Keller said she is telling clients not to count on going to the airport early in hopes of catching an earlier flight. Furthermore, she said, "I'm telling everyone to call and reconfirm their interisland flights and reservations."

That used to be almost unheard of in Hawai'i, but now it is — heaven forbid — almost like the Mainland.