Airlines to offer merger plan within week

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i's two interisland airlines expect to have a strategy ready within a week for getting approvals under an antitrust exemption that lets them collaborate on routes, schedules and other operations before their merger, an executive with the team working on the merger said yesterday.

"We'll have a clear strategy and targets associated for pursuing that (approval) within a week," said Steve DeSutter, executive vice president with TurnWorks Inc., the Houston turnaround firm that is engineering the merger.

"It won't take us long, but we all need to get in the same room and agree what we're going to do," DeSutter said.

Greg Brenneman, TurnWorks' chairman and chief executive officer, is leading the effort to merge Hawaiian and Aloha airlines and will become chairman and chief executive of the merged entity.

In November Congress passed an antitrust exemption that allows Hawaiian and Aloha to cooperate in several areas in response to the drastic loss of business that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The exemption was passed before the merger deal was announced.

Federal regulations prohibit Hawaiian and Aloha airlines from discussing merger issues such as routes and profitability before the merger closes, but the antitrust exemption overrides those regulations, Brenneman has said.

To operate under the exemption, the airlines must get approval of their cooperative proposals from Hawai'i Gov. Ben Cayetano. The governor then must ask Norman Mineta, the federal secretary of transportation, to sign off on the plans.

DeSutter said the two carriers are still determining what they want to request under the exemption. Because they are independent companies, "They still make their independent decisions about pursuing that opportunity," he said.

Brenneman is expected to return to Hawai'i this week after spending the holidays with family on the Mainland. DeSutter said Brenneman expects to continue meeting in the next few weeks with management, union leaders and union members of both airlines, as well as with elected officials and business and other community leaders.

Brenneman will meet with employees at airports in Honolulu and on the Neighbor Islands, DeSutter said.

Reach Susan Hooper at shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.