ATA to add Hawaii service
ATA Airlines, which flies to Hawaii from Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, has decided to undertake a significant ramp-up of service to Hawaii, this time from Phoenix.
The move could bring more discount fliers to Hawaii but offers a competitive challenge to Hawaiian Airlines, which currently is the only airline with daily service from Phoenix to Hawaii.
ATA, which entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy late last year, recently entered into a strategic alliance with Southwest Airlines, the nation's largest discount carrier. Southwest doesn't have FAA authorization to fly to Hawaii, so ATA's service to the islands is attractive to Southwest. Just days ago the chief financial officer of Southwest was named CEO of ATA.
ATA's vice president of planning, who is aptly named Stan Hula, says ATA will launch Phoenix flights to Hawaii in April and more in June, until it, too, is flying here daily. It will serve both Honolulu and Kahului from Phoenix.
That isn't all. By June the airline says it will also have four flights a week to Kauai, three of them from Los Angeles and the fourth from San Francisco. Two more flights from Los Angeles will go to Kona. ATA already has daily flights from Los Angeles to Maui which actually start in Indianapolis, the carrier's headquarters hub.
Just as Southwest intends to use ATA to get people to Hawaii, its closest discount competitor America West already interchanges passengers with Hawaiian Airlines at both of its hubs, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
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