March 2024 Hōʻike

OUR 2023 LEADER AND EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR

Congratulations

Gary Mata and Merle Bernades

Honoring Our Best

Each year, our Employee Recognition Banquet honors our Kūpono Award recipients, their nominators, and teammates marking milestone anniversaries with our announcement of the Employee of the Year and Leader of the Year: exceptional teammates who dedicate themselves to our company and their workgroups.

“I’m grateful to everyone in this room for your commitment to this airline we love, especially as we continue to navigate to a thriving future. We cannot do it without you.”

President & CEO Peter Ingram

Employee of the Year

Merle Bernades, OGG Administrative Assistant

Employee of the Year Merle Bernades, OGG Administrative Assistant Merle has been with Hawaiian Airlines for 28 years and is known as the organizational core of Kahului Station. But, the Lahaina fires made her commitment stand out even more. Despite losing her home, personal possessions, and neighborhood, she was at the office every day to check on her OGG ‘ohana and assist those affected by the disaster.

“Her efforts to ensure the safety and well-being of her colleagues –even while dealing with her own losses – was a lifeline and comfort for many among the OGG team,” Peter said. “I am grateful for the compassion and aloha that you provide your team each and every day.”

“HA is who we are, because of employees like Merle,” said her nominator, Director of Airport Operations Employee Support Kina Sai. ■

Leader of the Year

Gary Mata, LIH General Manager

Gary has served Hawaiian Airlines for 18 years and was recognized for his team-building prowess, despite staffing challenges at LIH Station. His solutions-oriented focus inspires not only his team, but those who collaborate with him in the operation. His nominator, Senior Analyst of Ground Operations Resource Planning Lisa Tilton, noted, “It may be tough, but he always believes in his team and that they will get it done.”

“He consistently demonstrates po‘okela by ensuring his team receives the support they need to deliver operational excellence while sharing an unwavering belief that they can get the job done, every day, safely and with aloha,” Peter said. ■

Kapuahi Makes Her Debut

February 23, 2024, was a momentous day in our company’s history as we blessed our first Boeing 787 aircraft. Bearing the name Kapuahi, after the red star known as Aldebaran, this luxurious aircraft pays homage to Polynesian voyaging traditions.

“As we journey across the Pacific and take people to and from Hawai‘i on our planes, it is in the same spirit and tradition of Hawaiian voyaging. Our kinship with voyaging is rooted in our past, grounds us in our present, and guides us toward our future,” Director of Community and Cultural Relations

Debbie Nakanelua-Richards

OVER 1,500 OF OUR TEAMMATES and their families joined the morning festivities, which included an opening performance by students from Windward O‘ahu’s Mālama Honua Public Charter School, live music, and remarks from President and CEO Peter Ingram and Boeing Vice President of Commercial Marketing Darren Hulst.

“I want to thank all the Hawaiian Airlines employees here today,” said Peter. “This is a celebration for you and all you have done for our company.”

After the official blessing, led by Kahu La‘akea Arista and Kumu Keoni Martin, excited employees and their guests took the aisles to begin their tours of the new aircraft.

“You can tell right away when you first step on the aircraft that a lot of thought went into it,” said Airbus A330 First Officer Charlie Morris. “Elements of Hawai‘i are evident in all corners of the plane.”

“I love everything about this Aircraft, especially here in the First Class cabin,” said LAS Guest Service Agent Bradford Tesch.

“It’s very rewarding to see her home in Honolulu,” said Senior Project Manager Tina Ahia.

Kapuahi will spend the next few weeks making rounds across Hawai‘i and our North America stations for familiarization visits before launching scheduled HNL - SFO flights April 15. ■

Revenue Management + Network Planning Team Spotlight

Where Are We with NDC?

NDC, or New Distribution Capability, is a set of technology standards developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to modernize and enhance how airlines distribute their products and services.

TRADITIONALLY, airline distribution has been heavily reliant on Global Distribution Systems (GDS), which connect airlines with travel agents. NDC provides airlines with more control over their offerings, allowing them to offer a wider range of products and respond more quickly to market demands. It enables the distribution of richer content, including ancillary services, fare bundles, and personalized offers, creating a more dynamic and customer-centric shopping experience for travelers.

Since our shift to NDC in 2022, we have maintained our strategy to convert our largest U.S. partners before focusing on our GDS and global partners. As of Jan. 1, we have moved 53% of our U.S. indirect business (those who don’t purchase via our website) to NDC, resulting in significant cost savings for Hawaiian. Our recent multiyear distribution agreement with Sabre is an important step — by the end of 2024, all Sabre-connected travel agencies worldwide will access our NDC content whether connecting directly to HA or via their GDS.

Why Move to NDC?

HA Owns the Offer: With a traditional GDS model the GDS partner creates the offer presented to the Guest by gathering pricing and inventory data — without HA input. In the NDC model, every request for pricing comes back to HA’s platform, where we generate the offer in real time.

Before the end of the decade, we expect more than 90% of bookings to be facilitated via NDC, although we will still work with all of today’s agency partners through every channel. Our goal, however, is to move away from the legacy standard because it restricts our abilities and product offerings. Once all GDS providers are connected, we will have set the foundation for our Revenue Management team to offer more pricing products and ancillary bundles in all channels. ■

OLD DISTRIBUTION MODEL

FARE SCHEDULE

Limited Information

Dynamic Pricing: With NDC, we can adjust fares based on various factors such as demand, time until departure, and individual customer characteristics. Airlines that have adopted this strategy have driven incremental revenue with these responsive pricing models.

Improved Ancillary Sales: Seat upgrades, extra baggage, or in-flight amenity sales improve with prominent positioning during the booking process.

Enhanced Personalization: The goal of NDC is to provide more personalized offers and services to travelers based on their preferences, travel history, and other relevant data in all channels – both direct via our website and indirect via our travel agency partners — for a more tailored and satisfying shopping experience.

Cost Savings: Direct distribution via NDC has reduced reliance on GDSes and their associated fees.

Improved Ancillary Sales: Seat upgrades, extra baggage, or in-flight amenity sales improve with prominent positioning during the booking process.

Richer Content: NDC supports the delivery of images, videos, and detailed product information, better showcasing our products in a crowded marketplace.

Better Connectivity: NDC aims to improve connectivity between airlines, travel agencies, and technology providers, reducing errors and improving efficiency.

Direct Distribution: NDC enables HA to distribute our products directly to travel agencies, corporate clients, and other thirdparty sellers without a GDS, reducing distribution costs and enabling more competitive pricing strategies.

Staying Ahead of Scheduling Obstacles

Our Network and Schedule Planning team is responsible for determining our destinations and how best to serve them with our current fleet. Irregular operations caused by airport work, mechanical issues, inclement weather, and other challenges can have a significant impact on even the best-laid plans. Senior Manager of Current Schedules Aaron Blinka and his team are tasked with assessing these obstacles and navigating around them – often with little notice.

What are some situations that have forced us to adjust our network and schedule on the fly? Challenges with our A321 fleet (Pratt and Whitney PW1000 engine supply): We’ve had two aircraft in our fleet parked since last year causing aircraft availability fluctuations due to engine change events.

Airport construction projects: Recently, we’ve had schedule impacts related to the 8L runway project in HNL, planned projects in OGG this Spring/Summer, unexpected projects in KOA. Last year, we endured airport projects on the U.S. Mainland, most notably in LGB where nightly runway closures forced us to reduce our schedules.

Unplanned maintenance events: Ground damage, delays to scheduled maintenance events, and unexpected events that take aircraft out of service for an extended period of time.

Special events or circumstances such as pre-coordinated military aircraft exercises.

How does your team adapt to sudden changes that can harm our operational reliability? It starts with being ready for any potential contingency by knowing how our schedule is structured and what levers we have available to pull, such as advanced bookings and crew routings to quickly create a plan that doesn’t jeopardize our operational reliability. We’re also able to adapt with quick coordination and continual communication across multiple teams to make the best decisions possible for the network. It truly takes a village to get a plan together to execute and adapt to sudden changes. Our teams have become adept at jumping into action to minimize our guest and team impacts.

Who is involved when a schedule adjustment is needed? Many teams and individuals are involved in taking schedule action, and it also depends on the type or scope of change. While the Schedules team will develop action plans, we are only able to do that by working together closely with our partners in SOCC (particularly our Managers on Duty), Maintenance Planning/Maintenance Operation Control, Crew Scheduling and Planning, Airport Operations, Catering, Operations Resource Planning, Operations Analytics, Corporate Real Estate, and Publications. Once we can come together and create the best possible plan, our Publications team will run the schedule change.

What factors must our team consider when making these adjustments? Short-term adjustments require a variety of items for consideration, like long-term schedule planning. We must consider:

■ guest demand, capacity constraints, and forward bookings,

■ crew implications (both pilot and flight attendant) such as duty time limitations and avoidance of stranding crews in outstations,

■ maintenance impacts for access and routing,

■ airport operations staffing and gating capabilities,

■ time of day limitations for construction projects or special events,

■ airport/aircraft performance limitations,

■ and catering impacts.

How important is lōkahi to your line of work? It is everything in terms of schedule changes. As mentioned previously, in all stages of short- and long-term schedule adjustments, we rely on a great deal of lōkahi across many teams. We would not be able to develop the best possible schedule scenarios without the input and support of all our Planning and Operational teams. In addition, lōkahi allows our teams to execute our schedules successfully. I am incredibly proud of all our teams’ dedication not just to lōkahi, but to all our values each time we navigate through a new schedule challenge. ■

Selling Hawai‘i in the Asia-Pacific

A strong U.S. Dollar relative to some AsiaPacific currencies is making it easier for more American residents to visit the region, with American, Delta, and United increasing services on some key routes. However, this situation, along with increasing hotel and other visitor amenity costs, has contributed to financial turbulence for our company whose business model focuses on bringing guests to the Islands.

WE HAVE REACTED to these post-pandemic challenges by returning one of our Haneda slot pairs, turning Auckland into a seasonal market, and adjusting service frequencies on select routes. Our International Sales team also continues to mine opportunities to help us overcome these obstacles while recognizing our limits.

“We are only one part of the holiday,” explained Managing Director for International Sales Andrew Stanbury. “We can drop fares, but we can’t solve for the high hotel costs in Hawai‘i. The lower currency exchange rates simply compound the problem.”

For Japan residents, a 50% devaluation of the Yen since 2019, coupled with an average 70% increase in hotel rates have more than doubled the cost of a Hawai‘i vacation. Buying habits have also changed, with less reliance on giant tour wholesalers that used to buy blocks of seats on our flights, ensuring a stable source of revenue. Our team is adjusting its point-ofsale mix to focus on independent travelers.

The Korean Won has seen a 15% devaluation against the Dollar; not as significant as that of the Yen, but still a drop that increases vacation costs for South Korea residents. We have seen steady demand from both ends of the route since pandemic-related restrictions were lifted, but Korean low-cost carrier Air Premia’s entry into this market at the beginning of the year has shifted some of that business. Hawai‘i also competes for visitors with Bali, Guam, Saipan, and other tropical Asia destinations.

Our Korea Sales team has been targeting key niche segments, including newlyweds and MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, and Exhibitions), positioning our premium product for success while recognizing price is just one of many factors in their destination choice.

“Even though Hawai‘i pricing is high at the moment, we know that these two segments aren’t as price sensitive, so we are holding seminars and fams for those groups,” explained Korea Country Director Soojin Yu. “Honeymooners are more open to splurge for that once-in-a-lifetime experience and they’re willing to spend more on Business Class and Extra Comfort seats – especially seats 11A/B in the A330 minicabin. However, their trips tend to be concentrated during spring and fall. The MICE customer is ready to spend year-round and books well in advance.”

In Oceania, we have adjusted flights to match seasonal demand and the price conscious consumer, suspending Auckland service April 3 to November 15 while maintaining Sydney service at fivetimes weekly. Our Sales teams continue incentivizing our travel partners to book Neighbor Island, North America, and off-season travel. We’re also highlighting the benefits of an O‘ahu stopover, including a more pleasant experience entering the United States via Honolulu compared with larger North America airports, and a range of Neighbor Island and U.S. Mainland gateways.

“Guests flying non-stop on our competitors to the U.S. Mainland have more limited choices because those carriers only fly into a major U.S. gateway, like LAX or SFO,” explained Andrew. “So if, for example, I’m taking my family to Disneyland, I can choose to fly into Long Beach to avoid the crowds and add even more holiday options. And, I’m doing this after I have already entered the U.S., and have perhaps taken a few days to adjust to a new time zone.”

Over the past five years, the scales have tipped in favor of southbound and westbound travelers: In 2019, 22% of our guests were beginning their international travel in the U.S. versus 49% today. In addition to a stronger currency, the decline of wholesaler bookings has made more inventory available for American residents, offering better pricing and flight options.

“We know that there are factors beyond our control, so we are working on the controllables to introduce even more people around the Pacific Rim to the destinations we serve and the warm Hawaiian hospitality during their journey,” added Andrew. ■

THE LATEST

Local Care, Global Reach Newsletter

Launching last month, this joint communication for Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines employees is meant to provide the latest on integration planning and help us get to know each other better. Read the first installment on HApeople.

Shareholder Vote

On Feb. 16, the shareholders of our parent company strongly supported the proposed combination with Alaska Airlines. Chief Legal Officer Aaron Alter shared, “While this is an important step in the process, it is one of many. This transaction is under regulatory review, and we continue to expect to complete the transaction within 12 to 18 months of the Dec. 3, 2023 announcement.”

Webcast + Post-Cast Updates

More information about the transaction was shared in the Feb. 22 companywide Hawaiian Live Webcast, and Aaron Alter provided context for the corporate governance of our company in a special post-cast interview.

“They really see growth potential and opportunities. I think that bodes well for the combination going forward.”

President & CEO Peter Ingram

Ka Ho‘ohanohano ‘Ana I Ka Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i / Celebrating Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawa‘i

‘A‘ole kākou i nele iki i nā papahana lu‘u a piha mana‘o ho‘i no ka Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i i kēia makahiki.

Nani ua mālama ‘ia nā papa ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i ‘o Ke Kumu no nā limahana a me nā mea līkaia, ua ho‘opuka pū ‘ia aku ka Hua ‘Ōlelo o Ka Pule ma luna o ka ‘Inakalama e a‘o aku ana iā kākou i kekahi o nā mahele o nā wa‘alele. Ua haku ‘ia maila nā pepa kala keiki me nā hua ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i i ho‘okohukohu ‘ia me nā mahele a kinona o ke kahua mokulele: he mea ia e ka‘akā‘ahi ‘ia aku ai ma nā ho‘olaule‘a ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i ‘o Ola Ka ‘Ī ho‘i ma Maui a me O‘ahu, pau pū me ‘elua wa‘alele ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i.

■ OGG-LGB ma Pepeluali, Lā ‘Umikūmālima ua kōkua ‘elua mau ‘ākena a ‘elua mau kuene mokulele me ka ho‘okipa ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i ‘ana iā Ka ‘Iwa Ho‘ola‘i, he hui huaka‘i mai ka liko a ka lā‘ele.

■ HNL-BOS ma Pepeluali, Lā Iwakāluakūmākahi ua kūkala ‘elua mau ‘ākena i nā kūkala ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (pau pū me nā hō‘ike kūlana ma loko o Amadeus). Ua hana pū akula ho‘i ‘ehiku mau kuene mokulele me nā kāleka i ka‘aka‘āhi ‘ia i nā ‘ōhua i hiki ai iā lākou ke ‘oka i ka ‘ai a me ka inu ma ka ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. Iā lākou ma Bosetona, ua komo pū ua po‘e kuene mokulele nei a me ho‘okahi pailaka i ka huaka‘i me ke ke‘ena kaiāulu a mea Hawai‘i i ka Hale Hō‘ike‘ike ‘o Peabody Essex ma Salem me ka hā‘awi pū ‘ana i lei lā‘ī, a me ke oli a mele pū ho‘i i ia ki‘i Hawai‘i mai ka wā kahiko mai. ■

No ka Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i o kēia makahiki, ua makana ‘ia he $10,000 i ka Pūnana Leo o Lahaina, he kula kamali‘i ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i nona ka hale ma Lahaina i pau i ke ahi o kēlā kauwela iho nei i hala.

There was no shortage of engaging and meaningful activations for this year’s Hawaiian Language Month:

In addition to the weekly Ke Kumu Hawaiian language class for employees and retirees, we launched a Hawaiian Word of the Week Instagram series that identified various aircraft parts. We also created keiki coloring sheets, featuring ‘ōlelo words associated with airport figures and objects, to share at Hawaiian Language Festivals on Maui and O‘ahu and aboard our two ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i flights:

■ OGG-LGB on February 15 included two fluent Guest Service Agents and two Flight Attendants to engage with Ka ‘Iwa Ho‘ola‘i, a group of traveling Hawaiian language enthusiasts ranging from keiki to kupuna.

■ HNL-BOS on February 21 featured Guest Service Agents making announcements in English and Hawaiian (even the flight status updates in Amadeus were entered in both languages), and a crew that included seven Hawaiian-speaking Flight Attendants who shared translation cards so guests could try ordering their meals and beverages in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. While in Boston, the crew joined our Community & Cultural Relations team at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem to present ti leaf lei and oli to Kū, a revered Native Hawaiian relic from the 1800s. ■

For this year’s Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i donation, we granted $10,000 to Pūnana Leo o Lahaina, a Hawaiian language immersion pre-school in Lahaina,which lost its facilities to last summer’s wildfires.