Aloha Airlines to stop flying Monday; CEO calls it
Aloha Airlines will stop flying Monday after serving Hawaii travelers for 61 years.
The airline announced Sunday it will shut down after flying its inter-island routes Monday but will not fly its routes to California and Nevada after Sunday. By Monday night, Aloha will have flown its last passenger.
United Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines said they would honor Aloha's tickets and would try to accommodate Aloha passengers with existing reservations. Hawaiian Airlines said it would fly extra flights early in the morning and late at night to meet inter-island demand.
In a news release Sunday, airline president and chief executive officer David Banmiller said the company did everything it could to find a buyer or financing, but ran out of time. "This is an incredibly dark day for Hawaii," he said.
The move will affect about 1,900 of its 3,400 employees, most of them in Hawaii. Honolulu-based Aloha was the state's 10th largest private employer in 2007, according to PBN research.
Aloha will continue cargo operations and aviation services while the U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeks buyers for those assets.
Aloha filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 20, the second time in three years internet payday loans. Aloha blamed what it termed unfair competition from go! airlines, a subsidiary of Arizona-based Mesa Air Group Inc., and Banmiller stood by that on Sunday.
"Aloha Airlines was founded in 1946 to give Hawaii's people a choice in inter-island air transportation," he said. "Unfortunately, unfair competition has succeeded in driving us out of business, bringing to an end a 61-year-old company with a proud legacy of serving millions of travelers in the true spirit of Aloha."
Founded as Trans-Pacific Airlines, the company started with a war-surplus DC-3 that offered charter flights from Honolulu to Maui and Hilo. Nicknamed "the Aloha Airline," Trans-Pacific officially changed its name to Aloha Airlines in 1958.
The airline was started out of frustration by Honolulu businessman Ruddy Tongg, a Chinese-American who was tired of seeing Hawaii residents treated as second-class citizens while tourists — mostly white — were given favored status. Tongg made a point to hire local residents and to promote it as the friendliest for inter-island travel.