Posted on: Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Now it's small juice all around

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

The only prize in Cracker Jack is a sticker.

"Courtesy gift wrap" means you get two assembly-required box halves and a single square of tissue paper.

Primo doesn't take back bottles anymore (to quote Darrell H.Y. Lum).

And Aloha Airlines is stopping first-class service on interisland travel.

"Today, virtually no one in Hawai'i wants to pay a premium for a first-class seat on a 30-minute interisland flight" said Glenn Zander, Aloha Airlines president and chief executive officer.

Well, of course we don't want to PAY for it, but we'd still like to have it around.

Otherwise, what good is it to have a second cousin, an old high school classmate or your grandma's former neighbor working at the Aloha Airlines counter if they can't give you the courtesy bump to seat 3B?

Not that we would ask. Local people would never ask. But we do get pretty happy when we see that ticket jacket coming back at us over the counter with the green felt marker on the "seat assignment" line and the secret code to the Ali'i Lounge written in the corner. Ho da special.

Folks who live on the Neighbor Islands know this best. You don't often get the Cousin Upgrade at the Honolulu Terminal, but in Hilo, Kona, Lihu'e and Kahului, they routinely pack those first 12 seats with a motley bunch of coach class friends and relatives all thrilled to get the free triangle bag of nuts.

If you end up on the outs, the first thing you do when you board is to look around to see who made it to the 12-seat promised land. There they are, the chosen people, spread out across the squeaky leather seats, their hand-carry baggage a comfortable distance from their feet, each arm resting on it's very own, non-shared arm rest. So lucky, them.

Every so often you overhear a passenger at the check-in counter who actually paid for the first-class seats and you think to yourself, yeah, the triangle bag nuts are pretty tasty but hundred-something dollars? They ain't that good. Never mind. I'll sit in the back with the small juice.

After June 30, we'll all be in the little seats with the small juice. Aloha will no longer offer first-class inter-island seats. (Hawaiian first class lives on). With the advent of e-tickets and self-check in, the cousin connection doesn't work anyway.

Maybe it's just as well. Like all such things in Hawai'i, the Cousin Upgrade is only a good thing if you're a member of the family. If you're the one with an aching back, six huge carry-ons and not a single cousin in the travel business, you've always hated it anyway.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.