KAILUA-KONA — Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. announced Thursday in a press release that it had applied with the U.S. Department of Transportation for authority to add a second nonstop route between Hawaii and Tokyo.
If granted the service, the airline’s flight would run four times per week between Haneda International Airport (HND) and Honolulu International Airport (HNL). It would also run three times per week between HND and Kona International Airport (KOA).
According to the release, KOA is the third-largest airport currently unable to offer passengers direct service to Japan’s most densely populated metropolis, despite having more point-of-sale Japanese passengers than 11 other U.S. destinations already able to offer customers nonstop flights to Tokyo.
“New direct service into Kona, especially international flights from Japan, would be a boon for Hawaii Island and make the entire state more appealing to travelers throughout Asia who make flight connections at Haneda Airport,” said George Szigeti, President and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
Three Hawaiian flights into KOA on the airline’s A330 aircraft have the capacity to deliver 834 visitors to the Big Island weekly. Ross Birch, Executive Director at the Big Island Visitors Bureau, said that the spend rate of Japanese tourists is higher than the average visitor to Hawaii and totals roughly $250 per day.
While the economic impact is hard to project with complete accuracy, assuming an 80 percent booking on each flight and an average stay on the island of five days, the potential benefit to the local economy tops out at tens of millions of dollars annually.
Projections of the overall economic benefit to the state are significantly higher, said Tim Sakahara, spokesman for the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT).
“The Hawaii Tourism Authority says that even one new international flight would accommodate about 71,000 international visitors per year, generating approximately $113 million in spending annually,” Sakahara said.
And that might just be a start. Accommodation of international flights to KOA would necessitate construction of a federal inspection station to meet United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) standards, which the now defunct facility at KOA does not.
Such a site would not only create jobs and decongest international traffic at HNL during the peak travel season, but would also open up the possibility for other airlines to run international flights directly to the Big Island — or as Birch put it, “open the floodgates.”
“I can say confidently that Korean Air is waiting for the moment they can have accessibility to land (at KOA),” Birch said, speculating that Japan-based airlines and others may quickly follow suit.
The House Finance Committee passed a state supplemental budget in March that would allow for $50 million to upgrade facilities at KOA and construct a permanent federal inspection station. Senate Bill 2933 and House Bill 2404, which each passed their second readings in February and are awaiting final approval, would allow for the issuance of general obligation bonds to fund the project.
Support for the station from both Gov. David Ige and the state Legislature makes it all the more likely the $50 million will be allocated. Sakahara said that based on the numbers from adding just one flight, the state’s tax revenue would total in the ballpark of $14 million annually, effectively allowing the project to pay for itself in fewer than four years.
The only hiccup might be the timing, as there currently exists no approved facility at KOA where a federal inspection station can be set up. Sakahara said the HDOT’s efforts to recertify the facility at KOA with the CBP are ongoing.
If recertification is successful, it could potentially bridge the time gap between when Hawaiian Airlines would start running nonstop flights from HND to KOA — assuming the company is granted authority to do so — and the time it would take to complete construction of a new federal inspection station at KOA.
Sakahara said construction of a new, permanent site would take approximately two years.
Tara Shimooka, a spokeswoman for Hawaiian Airlines, said it is still too early in the application process for the company to determine when flights from Tokyo might start touching down on the Big Island.