Airline passenger arrivals to Hawaii continue to decline during coronavirus lockdown
CRAIG T. KOJIMA /CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Seventeen Hawaiian Air jets sit on a runway today at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport as interisland and trans-Pacific travel disappear in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA /CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Traveler Ikaika Picanso, right, checks in at Hawaiian Air to get on flight back home to the Big Island today at Honolulu airport.
Passengers coming to Hawaii on trans-Pacific flights Tuesday remained low, continuing the dampening that began when the state implemented strict COVID-19 containment measures.
Gov. David Ige instituted a 14-day mandatory self-quarantine for all arriving trans-Pacific passengers on March 26. At 12:01 a.m today, the quarantine was expanded to include interisland passengers. A count of interisland passengers is not yet available.
On Tuesday, the Hawaii Tourism Authority reported that trans-Pacific passengers had dropped to 906, including 161 visitors and 321 residents. The count also included 223 airline crew members, 87 transit passengers and 114 intended new residents for Oahu.
Since March 26, only 1,067 visitors have come into the state on trans-Pacific flights — that’s roughly 16% of the 6,709 who came over the last six days.
Normally, at this time of year, roughly 180,000 visitors would have come during the same period. In March 2019, average daily passenger counts were above 30,000.
In March 2019, HTA reported that there was an average of 253,498 visitors statewide on any given day. That same month, some 939,064 visitors visited the Hawaiian islands.
