Hawaii passenger arrivals reduced to trickle after coronavirus quarantine
CRAIG T. KOJIMA /CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Seventeen Hawaiian Air jets are parked on a runway at Honolulu airport Wednesday.
Fewer than 1,200 visitors have come to Hawaii’s airports on trans-Pacific flights in the week since 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. That quarantine was expanded to include interisland travelers on Wednesday. A count of interisland passengers is not yet available.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority reported today that Wednesday’s trans-Pacific passenger count had dropped to 664, including, including 120 visitors and 257 residents. The count also included 159 airline crew members, 62 transit passengers and 64 intended new residents for Oahu and two for Kona.
On Wednesday, only 22 trans-Pacific flights came to the Hawaiian islands.
Since March 26, only 1,187 visitors have come into the state on trans-Pacific flights.
Normally, at this time of year, roughly 210,000 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 and 927,246 came by air.
