|
DESPITE
rising jet fuel costs, Hawaiian Airlines announced the
schedule and fares for its new nonstop service between
Honolulu and Manila.
In a statement Wednesday, the Hawaiian
Holdings Inc. subsidiary said flights “will commence
from Honolulu on April 14 and from Manila on April 17,
2008, with four flights per week.”
“Ticket sales have begun on the
airline’s web site and through its reservations call
center, as well as through travel agents in the United
States and the Philippines,” the company said.
It also said it expects the first flight
to depart
Honolulu
International Airport at 12:30 p.m. and arrive at the
Ninoy Aquino International Airport the next day at 5:15
p.m.
Return Flight 456 will depart Manila
that day at 7 p.m. and arrive in Honolulu the next day
at 11:15 a.m.
Manila is 18 hours ahead of Honolulu and
the flight crosses the International Dateline, the
company explained.
Hawaiian Air said roundtrip fares for
the new service begin at $848 in coach class and may be
purchased online.
However, a third-party contractor the
company hired in April last year pegs the roundtrip fare
at $951.80 (P39,023.80).
One, however, can only pay in dollars
and through credit cards, a sales agent said when the
BusinessMirror called up the Manila-based contact
center.
Buying tickets online would cost higher:
$569 for a one-way flight from Manila to Honolulu and
$414 for the flight back to Manila.
Nonetheless, the company expresses
optimism that business would pick up, saying it expects
the 170,000 passengers on the Honolulu-Manila route last
year to double.
“Manila will be Hawaiian’s first gateway
[to] Asia. The new service will make Hawaiian the only
US
carrier providing nonstop service between
Manila and
Honolulu
and will more than double current capacity on the
route,” the company said.
Hawaii has nearly 300,000 residents that
are identified as either Filipino or part-Filipino,
representing 23.5 percent of the state’s population.
The first wave of migration to the
US
came to Hawaii from the Northern Luzon provinces.
Its first Filipino governor, Benjamin
Cayetano, “grew up in Kalihi, O’ahu, raised by a
divorced immigrant father from the
Philippines,”
the Hawaii History web site said.
Hawaiian Air’s other operating expense
shot up in the nine months ending September 2007 to
$33.353 million from $12.472 million in the same period
in 2006.
The company said in a report to the US
Securities and Exchange Commission the increase included
transition expenses related to the transfer of certain
of our reservations functions to an unnamed third-party
contractor in the Philippines. --D. Estopace |
