CEO Interview
Restoring the network Peter Ingram, Hawaiian Airlines CEO, says the airline must be able to properly respond to the desire to travel and create a rich experience for Hawaiian’s guests. INTERVIEW BY: PERRY FLINT
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ith tourism playing an important part of the Hawaiian economy—and a growing portion of Hawaiian Airlines’ business—it is vital that the global network recovers and the airline is not held back by restrictions on international travel.
How would you characterize your 2021 financial results and what do they tell us about the industry recovery?
Last year represented a substantial recovery from 2020 and the depths of the pandemic. At the end of 2020, we got relief from the strict Airlines 2022 – 01
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“By July 2021 we were flying a larger schedule between Hawaii and the mainland than before the pandemic.”
quarantine requirements for folks coming into Hawaii that had been in place for much of the year and that sparked a robust domestic recovery. By July 2021, we were flying a larger schedule between Hawaii and the mainland than we were before the pandemic, with new routes between Honolulu to Austin, Orlando, and Ontario, California. Our load factor recovered too. There were some ups and down in the back half of the year with Omicron but domestically it was a solid recovery. To be clear, though, things are not fully back to normal. The part of the network that continues to lag is international. Many of the markets that are important to our network and to Hawaii’s tourism industry, including Japan—which historically has been our largest source of international visitors—South Korea, and New Zealand have not recovered. Japan continues to be held back by restrictions on international travel and stops us from having a full recovery. But we’re hopeful that in 2022 we’ll move forward to the full restoration of our network as it looked before the pandemic. How important is international travel to your network?
Before the pandemic, international travel was about 25% of our business and in 2021 it was 90% down. But at the end of last year, we were able to resume flying to Australia, which had been closed since March 2020. We’re currently operating four weekly flights to Sydney. airlines.iata.org
28/02/2022 14:56
