Hawaiian Air eyes Hawaii-Europe nonstop flights

Billionaire British tycoon Sir Richard Branson has not come through with his idea six years ago of having his London-based Virgin Atlantic fly nonstop regularly between Honolulu and London, but Hawaiian Airline has similar flights on its agenda of possibilities.

"We are studying traffic from Europe to Hawaii and, hopefully, five years from now, the number of Europeans in Hawaii will be sufficient to justify operating flights nonstop from Hawaii to Europe," said Hawaiian Airlines’ Mark Dunkerley.

Part of what has created the possibility has been Hawaiian’s purchase of long-range Airbus A-350 jet airliners produced by a consortium of European aerospace companies in France. Hawaiian presently has nine in its fleet and 13 more on order, five of which will arrive this year, Dunkerley said.

"The A-350 has tremendous range," he said. "It’s an aircraft that can fly for 17 or so hours," he said. "Once you have that kind of range, parts of Europe come into range, as do some of the parts of Asia that are farther from us, places like Singapore, Bangkok.

"It’s still some five years until those aircraft arrive in our fleets," Dunkerley added cautiously, "and so we certainly watch Europe very closely with absolutely not making any commitments right now."