Interisland travelers can only dream today of the $19 and $39 one-way fares that were common just a few years ago.

The lowest one-way fares offered by Hawaiian Airlines and go! Mokulele are now $63, while Island Air, which doesn’t offer the same frequency as its rivals, has a low of $56. On top of that, all three carriers charge a baggage fee of $10 for the first checked bag.

But if there’s a silver lining to the higher fares, it’s that the three airlines are now profitable. The heads of all three say pricing has stabilized and that if fuel costs stay in check, fares will stay near current levels.

"Consumers enjoyed below-cost travel for nearly two years," said local aviation historian Peter Forman.

Prices dropped when Mesa Air Group’s go! came into the interisland airline market with great fanfare nearly five years ago and started a fare war that saw go! sell one-way tickets for as low as $1.

That couldn’t last for long and it didn’t.

"We have seen fares go up from the unsustainable levels in recent history, and that’s a good thing for the marketplace in that it keeps the airlines healthy," Hawaiian spokesman Keoni Wagner said.

The fare war ultimately cost Mesa, Hawaiian Airlines and Island Air millions of dollars and helped lead to the shutdown of 61-year-old Aloha Airlines.

Hawaiian has emerged as the big winner with a dominant 84 percent of the interisland passenger market, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Transportation. In 2007, the last full year that Aloha was in operation, Hawaiian carried 49 percent of the interisland passengers.

Go!, which formed a joint venture with latecomer Mokulele Airlines in October 2009 and re-branded itself as go! Mokulele, has about 10 percent of the passenger market today compared with just under 8 percent in 2007. Island Air’s passenger market share today is just under 5 percent.

Hawaiian has had 10 straight profitable quarters. Go! Mokulele is now profitable, according to Mesa Chairman and CEO Jonathan Ornstein. And Island Air is marginally profitable, says owner and Chairman Charlie Willis.

The real benefactor of the price war was the consumers, "who saved hundreds of millions of dollars over the last five years," Ornstein said. "The company (go! Mokulele) is profitable now, and I expect it will remain so in the future."

Consumers may still be benefiting from the threat of more competition in the interisland market, said Forman, the local historian.

"In a healthier market for the airlines, it would be higher, but because there’s only one strong airline in the market, there’s pricing constraint to avoid having a Southwest Airlines or Alaska Airlines come in and set up interisland flying," he said.

One thing is clear: Aloha suffered the most from the price war, ceasing operations in March 2008 and laying off more than 2,000 employees, the biggest mass layoff in state history.

To this day, airline executives and analysts debate who is to blame for Aloha’s demise.

Island Air owner Willis blames go!.

"When a company comes into a market and gives away tickets either for nothing or near to nothing, no one can compete in that type of marketplace," Willis said. "Go! drove Aloha out of business."

But Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant for the Colorado-based Boyd Group, said Mesa shouldn’t be blamed for Aloha pulling up stakes.

"They weren’t responsible at all," Boyd said. "This is business and they (Aloha) are big boys. There wasn’t enough market for three carriers to start with, and go! had every right to go into that market."

In a recent letter to the editor, former Aloha CEO David Banmiller said the entry by go! into Hawaii destabilized the local market and that "the clear intent of go!’s predatory pricing was to put Aloha … out of business."

But Ornstein said Aloha had the wrong equipment and high costs, and was ripe for a challenge.

"If it hadn’t been us entering the market, it would have been another carrier," Ornstein said. "I think if the management there had chosen to work with us like we had proposed, the outcome would have been far different for everyone."