Posted on: Saturday, February 2,2002

Cutting flights didn't help Hawaiian profits

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

The flight cuts that Hawaiian Airlines made after the Sept. 11 attacks helped fill planes in the fourth quarter, but a key measure of profitability still was down for the quarter compared to the same period in 2000, the airline said.

Hawaiian cut nearly 20 percent of its flights in response to the downturn in travel following the attacks. Its load factor — an industry term for the percentage of seats filled on flights — was 79.7 percent in October, up 4.5 percentage points from October 2000.

In November the load factor was 80.2 percent, up 5.4 percentage points from the year before. December's load factor was 78.8 percent, up 5.9 percentage points from the year before.

For the fourth quarter, the number of passengers was down 12.1 percent from fourth-quarter 2000, to 1.3 million. The load factor for the quarter was 79.5 percent, up 5.2 percentage points from fourth quarter 2000.

But Hawaiian's revenue passenger miles — a key measure of profitability based on the number of paying passengers and the amount of miles they traveled — were down 11.5 percent for the fourth quarter compared to the year before. Still, the drop from the year before grew smaller with each month in the quarter. Revenue passenger miles were down 16 percent in October, 12 percent in November and 6.3 percent in December, the airline said.

Keoni Wagner, a Hawaiian spokesman, said improvement in the airline's traffic came from its West Coast business, which has gradually recovered "to the point where it's now back to very reasonably strong levels." Interisland travel, however, remains soft, he said.

For the year, the airline had 5.8 million passengers, down 6.8 percent from 2000. The load factor for the year was 79.2 percent, up 1.1 percentage points from the year before.