New ways and a new attitude
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawaiian Airlines employees could still remember the last attempt to board interisland travelers by assigned seats when Hawaiian's managers late last year started talking about trying it again.
"Why are we doing this?" asked Jonathan Davis and his fellow Hawaiian employees on Maui. "We already tried it, and it was a failure."
But Hawaiian launched its latest assigned-seating plan for interisland passengers anyway on March 1. And after only two weeks of real-life experience, many once-skeptical longtime employees are ready to proclaim the program a success.
"I was really surprised," said Derrick Yoshioka, a Hawaiian Airlines chief agent and 30-year employee. "It worked out a lot better than I expected."
The new program began as Hawaiian prepares to emerge from two years of federal bankruptcy protection on April 1 under new ownership.
It represents a new attitude among Hawaiian's employees and managers, one that workers hope will continue under RC Aviation LLC, an arm of San Diego-based Ranch Capital LLC, which won tentative court approval on Thursday to take over Hawai'i's largest airline.
Despite being under federal bankruptcy protection for the last two years, many of Hawaiian's 3,300 employees said they have grown to trust their company's latest management team as they've seen revenue improve and an on-time performance rate that has led America's airline industry for 15 straight months.
Just as importantly, employees say, the assigned-seating program represents another example of how Hawaiian Airlines and its once-low employee morale have turned around during bankruptcy.
"We're not afraid to try anything new anymore," said six-year employee Hi'ilani Kuali'i.
Learning new ways
The latest assigned-seating idea began while the bad memories of two years ago remained clear in the minds of employees.
Back then, employees kept track of seat assignments by hand and had no computerized way of discovering duplicate assignments until passengers found others sitting in their seats.
At the boarding gates, the change to assigned seats unleashed confusion among Islanders who were used to standing in line up to 45 minutes early so they could sit together with their families, or to simply make sure they got their preferred aisle or window seat.
And Hawaiian employees could still hear the complaints of Mainland travelers, long accustomed to assigned seating, who could not understand all of the fuss over boarding passengers for a 30-minute flight from one island to another.
Hawaiian workers nevertheless listened in November as their bosses talked about 2005 being "The Year of the Hassle-Free Experience" — beginning with assigned seats for inter-island travel, just like Hawaiian's longer, trans-Pacific flights.
Managers talked about the changes since the last assigned-seating experiment, such as the push to get passengers to book tickets over the Internet, check themselves in at the airport using the new "Hele On" machines in Hawaiian's ticket lobbies or head straight to the gate by having their bags delivered to the airport via BaggageDirect.com.
No more cattle rush
This year, Hawaiian Airlines managers also spent $75,000 on electronic ticket readers at boarding gates statewide to better track interisland seat assignments.
They also created a new job of assigning seats 24 hours before each flight, instead of minutes before.
The changes worked, employees said.
Gone is what Seth Cleveland Jr. called the "cattle rush to get on the plane. ... There isn't a big hassle anymore for people fighting to squeeze their bags on the plane."
Cleveland has been with Hawaiian for 37 years. Like other former gate and ticket agents, Cleveland's title this year was changed to "customer experience agent."
He and other longtime employees said the assigned-seating change has reduced the stress of both passengers and employees and made boarding more efficient and easier.
"Passengers can relax, talk story and not rush up to the gate," said Kuali'i, a customer experience agent in Hilo.
As Davis on Maui said, "We were expecting a monster and the monster never came."
Hawai'i's other major inter-island carrier, Aloha Airlines, does not assign seats and has not announced plans to copy its competitor.
Changes in attitude
After 36 years at Hawaiian, customer experience agent Wesley Sugai has a new attitude and a new job.
Sugai now spends his time behind a computer terminal at Hawaiian's new "flight accommodations desk" assigning seats to passengers. Sugai said his job is critical to making sure passengers and his fellow employees don't face a bottleneck on the jetways leading to each plane.
Sugai is supposed to show up at work each morning at 4:15 for his new job. Instead, he's so eager to get to work that he arrives at 3:15.
"I'm 58 and I feel like I'm 22," Sugai said. "Management entrusted me with this position, and I feel I have a big responsibility."
One of the big changes during bankruptcy has been a new attitude among Hawaiian's managers toward the opinions of their workers, longtime employees said.
Workers in Hilo realized they needed to move 100 chairs from the airport lobby to the boarding gate to give passengers a place to sit while waiting to board by rows, Kuali'i said. Agents in Kona figured out that they could speed up boarding by adjusting the number of rows they board at any time.
"People are happier because management has been listening to us," said Lisa Sawamura, a customer experience agent who works the flight accommodations desk after Sugai.
Blaine Miyasato, Hawaiian's vice president for customer services, said "the feedback has been plentiful."
The assigned-seating project is just the first for "The Year of the Hassle-Free Experience."
Hawaiian's management has yet to decide what will come next, Miyasato said. But the next idea could come from Hawaiian's employees, he said.
Maybe it will be Kuali'i's idea to hand out pamphlets or brochures to Mainland passengers about interesting things to do on each island, offered from the perspective of Hawaiian employees.
Maybe it will be Davis' idea to set up a Hawaiian Airlines concierge desk at each airport.
Whatever change comes, Miyasato said that he hopes it frees up Hawaiian's workers to spend more time helping passengers: "Hawaiian has such great people. I hope that's where we're headed."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.
