There is no other state in the
country more southwest than this.
How challenging is it
to work in this market?
Well, they call the coconut wireless
and so that's basically word of
mouth is very strong in Hawaii.
Four years after Southwest
Airlines started flying to Hawaii,
the Dallas based carrier returned
with something it rarely does and
I'm very, very proud of it.
It's the most complicated
paint job we've ever done,
by the way. Is it really?
Yeah, 16 colors, 23 days to paint.
But. But it's beautiful.
Southwest flies more than 800
aircraft and only 13 of them have
special paint jobs known as liveries.
This Hawaiian themed 737 is now the 14th
and we went along and it's
maiden voyage to the islands.
Sitting next to the CEO Bob Jordan,
Hawaiian Airlines still
has massive market share.
We're just a little bitty Southwest Airlines.
Stop it. We no longer you
little bitty Southwest Airlines.
We have no we we have we have no desire.
In fact, we don't even think of it that way.
We think about our role in the market,
how Hawaii fits into our network.
Southwest started here with four
flights in Hawaii. It now has 90.
The majority of them aren't
flying across the Pacific,
they're flying between the islands.
Andrew Watterson is the Chief
Operating Officer in Southwest.
They don't have an Interstate that
you can drive between the islands.
So if you need health care,
you have to fly. And so
you have people here telling you that,
hey, we need the competition.
Oh, yes, from the from the governor down
to the man in the street, so to speak.
They were all just fit to be tied
about the the lack of competition
because of a previous competitor went
out of business like a decade ago.
And so they really wanted more
competition. When
Aloha Airlines went out of business in 2008,
that left Hawaiian Airlines with
a near monopoly. Fares increased
and Southwest saw an opportunity.
But Hawaii's Lieutenant governor
told us this is more than
just a story of competition.
It's really one,
she says of social justice.
A lot of these rural areas or
a lot of the neighbor islands,
they don't have the type of healthcare
services that urban Honolulu has.
And in order to have a major surgery
you need to fly to Honolulu and it
becomes a real social justice issue.
Airfare has dropped significantly in the
average of sometimes from 150 to about $40.
Are low fares enough to attract
locals to the Southwest Airlines
there enough for me? Well,
affairs are enough for me, but
Paul Brubaker is the chief economist
at the Bank of Hawaii. Frank Haas
there is a management consultant. How
do locals look at Southwest
Airlines? I think they're
they're seen as the new kid,
but but they see the benefit of having
the new kid around for the consumer.
It's probably all good,
but it's important to remember there's always
a tension between Kamaaina and Malahini,
right, the locals versus the.
The outsider guys.
And so Southwest is going
to have to overcome that.
Well, it takes time.
And everybody who's come here has
been a Malahini at one point.
Be yourself, be true to yourself,
be true to true to your brand.
But yeah, try to fit in, bro.
Today the Dallas based airline
has 800 employees on the islands,
just a sliver of the staff at
Hawaiian, the hometown airline.
Yes, our market share has gone up,
but we're not trying to
take away their customers.
We're trying to bring customers,
you know, off the the couch, so to speak.
In Texas, it was get them out of
the cars and in the airplane.
Well, here they can't drive.
But what comes after Hawaii,
Southwest isn't yet saying
over the next 12 to 18 months,
though the airline does say
it will add more flights to
destinations it already flies,
restoring what it reduced
during the pandemic.
While still working to fit in here,
Kamakwa Keke, the most remote destination
it has ever flown in spirit to eat
more one in Hawaii. I'm Jason White.