Hawaiian Airlines is to offer daily year-round services between Los Angeles and Kahului from this summer to answer increasing demand from the Southern California market. The link, which will commence on July 1, 2014, further reinforces the carrier’s growth strategy in this market.

More than 120,000 air seats will be added to both Los Angeles and Maui's travel markets when the new non-stop service launches on July 1, 2014. The new daily service also capitalizes on convenient connections to Hawai'i from other cities on the US mainland through Hawaiian Airlines' growing network with airline partners. In addition, Hawaiian Airlines' Maui hub, which was established in 2012, offers an alternative connecting point for travel to other islands with its expanded neighbor island flight schedule.

"The island of Maui continues to grow as a popular visitor destination and also serves as an ideal transit point for neighbour island and US Mainland travel," said Peter Ingram, executive vice president and chief commercial officer, Hawaiian Airlines. “We've seen tremendous demand from both Southern California travelers and our kama'aina [residents], and we're very pleased to offer this new daily non-stop service for them.”

The new daily service will be operated by Hawaiian’s wide-body, twin-aisle Airbus A330-200 aircraft, which seats 294 passengers with 18 in First Class and 276 in the Main Cabin. Hawaiian has offered seasonal non-stop services on this route for the past two years and will compete with American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

In the table below we look in greater detail at point-to-point demand between Los Angeles and Kahului over a five year period between 2008 and 2012 and the dominant carriers on this city pair. Although estimated bi-directional O&D demand has fallen in four of the five years due to airline schedule changes, there remains a strong inherent demand.

Hawaiian’s own traffic rose in 2012 versus the previous year, boosting its share of the market from six to nine per cent. Preliminary data for 2013 shows that this market will return to growth with O&D traffic up 48.9 per cent across the first three quarters (calendar year to end of September 2013) with Hawaiian’s own share of demand rising from nine to 13 per cent compared to the same period in 2012.