Mechanical woes idle Hawaiian flight for 18 hours

A nonstop flight from Oakland, Calif., to Honolulu on Christmas Eve became a Christmas Day nightmare for passengers after they had to board three different planes during a 18-hour delay.

Lauren Kawana, who was on Hawaiian Airlines Flight 47, said the misadventure felt like a cruel joke, but Hawaiian did give travelers a $500 travel credit because of the holiday mishap.

“It was the worst flight of my life,” said Kawana, a former Hawaii resident who flies frequently as associate producer of the documentary “Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw.”

She added, “It was pretty brutal.”

The flight was supposed to depart at 9:15 a.m. Thursday and arrive after noon in Honolulu.

But 90 minutes after boarding, the crew was still conducting maintenance tests and began offering passengers the option of disembarking. Eventually, all passengers were told to get off because the delay was taking so long.

A couple of hours later at the terminal, passengers were told they wouldn’t leave until 1 a.m.

“That was a huge disappointment,” said Kawana, a Berkeley, Calif., resident trying to visit family in Hawaii for a two-week vacation.

One woman missed a Christmas Eve surprise dinner with her grandchildren in Ko Olina, and another passenger couldn’t make a lunch that he was hosting, she said.

Hawaiian offered passengers hotel vouchers and told them to return to the airport by 11 p.m.

Meanwhile the crew remained friendly, with one spreading Yuletide cheer by playing Christmas carols on an ukulele.

Ian Wetherall of Concord, Calif., who was also on the flight, said the airline ran out of hotel rooms, and he stayed at the airport the entire day. Some passengers were vocal about their complaints and visibly frustrated.

Just after midnight Friday, passengers began boarding a second plane, but sat on the runway as the crew struggled with another round of difficulties. About a half-hour later, the pilot said the jet was returning to the gate because of a problem with the auto-thrust.

“At that point everyone was like, ‘This is unreal,’” Kawana said.

Wetherall said the second plane was only 8 weeks old.

The passengers moved their carry-on luggage to a third plane, which arrived from Maui and finally departed at about 3:40 a.m., arriving in Honolulu at about 6:15 a.m.

“Everyone was so crazy tired,” Kawana said. “The parents of the babies, they had it the worst because (the children) were screaming nonstop on the flight back. People were just delirious.”

Wetherall, who is visiting Hawaii for only a week, said some passengers were disappointed to lose time with their families.

“There were a lot of parents who just looked exhausted,” he said.

FlightAware.com said the returning jet was an Airbus A330, which can seat about 295 people. Kawana said it was nearly full.

Ann Botticelli, Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman, said the first plane had a problem with the indicator system, and the second plane also had a mechanical problem.

She said 25 passengers re-booked on other airlines, eight canceled their flights and more than 200 passengers flew in on Christmas morning.

She said besides the hotel voucher, the airline also issued lunch and dinner vouchers and $500 travel credits to the passengers because of the long holiday delay.

“We do feel very badly about it,” Botticelli said. “It’s Christmas time, and everybody was heading toward their vacation, but we put safety as our priority.”

Kawana said she was exhausted, but excited to see her family and plans to come back in February for the screening of her movie “Mind/Game,” which is about former women’s basketball champion Chamique Holds­claw’s struggle with mental health, at the Honolulu African American Film Festival.

“It’s good now,” she said Friday afternoon. “We’re celebrating in Aiea and I’m feeling good.”