honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, January 6, 2006

Hawaiian closing its last city ticket site

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaiian Airlines is closing its Ala Moana reservations counter — the company's last city ticket office — this month, citing a decline in paper-ticket sales.

The last day of operations for Hawaiian's ticket counter in the Sears store at Ala Moana Center is Jan. 27, said Hawaiian Airlines spokesman Keoni Wagner.

"It's not economical anymore with the decline in over-the-counter ticketing," he said. "So much of our business is online now. ... But we're still offering over-the-counter service at all of our airport locations."

The four employees who work at the Ala Moana ticket office will not be laid off and will be able to bid into other jobs within the company, Wagner said.

Hawaiian once had five ticket counters in Hawai'i, and they have been closing over the past couple of years, he said.

"Our business is changing with more and more people booking and ticketing over the Web, and that's had a pretty dramatic effect on foot traffic to these offices," he said.

Hawaiian's decision follows several closures of airline city ticket counters as more customers are purchasing tickets online.

Aloha Airlines shut down its ticket offices at Pearlridge Center and Windward Mall last year. But the airline has no plans to close its ticket counter in the Sears store in Ala Moana Center, said company spokesman Stu Glauberman.

United Airlines, which once had seven ticket offices in Hawai'i, closed its last reservations center in Ala Moana and the rest of its offices nationwide in 2003 in an effort to cut costs.

Continental Airlines still has a ticket office on the mauka side of Ala Moana Center's mall level, said Ala Moana Center marketing and promotions director Jasmine Tso.

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com.