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Hawaiian Airlines experiences January drop in passenger traffic

JAMM AQUINO / SEPT. 2018

A Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A-330 takes off from the Reef Runway at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

Hawaiian airline’s passenger traffic fell 1.5 percent in January, a month where Hawaii’s visitor industry had already reported pockets of softening.

The state’s largest carrier transported 958,548 passengers compared with 972, 672 in January 2018. Hawaiian’s load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, inched up 0.2 percentage point to 84.3 percent from 84.1.

Revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger transported one mile, increased 4.8 percent to more than 1.4 million. Available seat miles, or one seat transported one mile, rose 4.6 percent to more than 1.7 million.

Passenger traffic was down in December 2018, too. However that didn’t stop the parent company of Hawaiian Airlines, Hawaiian Holdings Inc. from posting net income in the fourth quarter of $31. 6 million or 64 cents a share, to end the year with a profit of $233.2 million, or $4.62 per share.

January’s results followed a strong year for Hawaiian Airlines, which carried an all-time high of 11,840,178 passengers in 2018. Higher fuel prices, increased competition, aircraft delivery delays, the Kilauea eruption and severe weather events in 2018 didn’t prevent Hawaiian Holdings Inc. from carrying the most passengers of any year or surpassing analyst’s expectations.

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