Airline, Island Government Disagree

In this corner, the Samoan: Governor Togiola Tulafono of American Samoa. In that corner, the Hawaiian: Hawaiian Airlines, the inter-island carrier that also flies to the mainland and Samoa. The issue: Hawaiian's service to the island's Pago Pago International.

On May 19, Tulafono sent a letter to Hawaiian's President and CEO Mark B. Dunkerly, slamming the airline and setting out a list of demands. If his demands were not met within a 45-day deadline, Togiola would initiate a class-action suit against the line.

Tulafono's demands included a cut in fares to $500 round-trip, the airline to absorb all "international" fees and charges, eliminate excess baggage charges, provide free inflight entertainment, make the tickets refundable and provide Samoan-speaking gate agents and flight attendants.

The governor, called Governor Togiola on the island, complains that poor Samoans are being gouged by Hawaiian, and hinted that discrimination is the root of the problem (and would certainly be charged prominently in any lawsuit). Median income on the island is only about $10,000 a year, making a plane ticket an extreme expense for most islanders.

Governor Tulafono (right) first called on Hawaiian to cut fares to $500 in February. At the time, he said that Hawaiian was charging $763 and $1,000 for a round-trip, and he asked the airline to drop the fares to $500 -- which he said was the average cost of a flight from Honolulu to California, about the same distance. In his May 19th letter, he repeated his message, charging that fees to PPG were double Hawaiian's fees to the mainland, and calling for a cut -- only this time he wasn't asking, he was telling.

This week, Hawaiian honcho Dunkerly replied to Tulafono, promising that Hawaiian had no tolerance for discrimination and any such would be dealt with "in the most uncompromising way." But he also gently told the governor that many of the charges in Tulafono's letter simply weren't accurate.

"I can understand how you might feel about Hawaiian's service to American Samoa based on the information you relayed in your letter to me, which I suspect you had received from others. Unfortunately, much of that information is incorrect."

Specific points that Dunkerly disputed included Hawaiian's use of Samoan-speakers at check-in counters and on Pago Pago flights, and the degree of control the airline has over what is an "international" destination. That decision, he wrote, is made by the Federal government, and it triggers a number of fees to the disadvantage of Samoans. "There are a range of extra costs that arise because of this designation by the U.S. government, the clearest of which is the charge per-passenger-carried for Customs and Immigration."

But most importantly, Dunkerly denied the charge of discrimination, or that fares to PPG were out of proportion. "Hawaiian uses exactly the same approach" for fares to PPG or to mainland destinations, he said. "In each case, the cheapest fares are non-refundable -- in fact Pago Pago was the last route on which we applied these restrictions -- while our full fare tickets, including those to Pago Pago are fully refundable."

The charge fees, excess baggage fees, cancellation penalties, entertainment-system charges and no-show penalties that Governor Tulafono thought were unique to the Honolulu-Pago Pago route also apply identically on Hawaiian's flights to the mainland.

And fares? "Today, our lowest round-trip fare for summer travel to Pago Pago is $674. Our lowest fare to Los Angeles is $576, and the average of our lowest fares to all other U.S. mainland destinations is $635. We currently have no published fares of $500 or less for travel to any of our mainland or international routes."

The Pago Pago fares aren't double the mainland fares, then. But they are higher. Dunkerly attributes this to a difference in costs. "If you look at landing fees only, in Pago Pago we pay $1,428; in Los Angeles $908; and just $760 on average to land at the other airports we serve on the mainland," he says. On average, landing and other fees are about 35% higher in Pago Pago. The differential on fuel is not that great, but it's still there: "[O]ver the past five months the actual difference between the LAX base fuel price and the PPG base fuel price has averaged 34.4 cents per gallon."

Dunkerly had several other issues with the information behind the governor's letter, but closed on a positive suggestion, asking for a face-to-face meeting, perhaps on June 26th in Samoa, or in Honolulu at Tulafono's convenience.

This is just the latest in a string of complications for Hawaiian Airlines. The firm has had a rocky path through Chapter 11, pulled this way and that by several trustees and literally hundreds of lawyers filing literally thousands of motions. It entered Chapter 11 on March 21, 2003, and has yet to emerge.

The airline flies Boeing equipment; 717-200s, which replaced DC-9s, for inter-island flights, and 767-300ERs for longer flights, including the Honolulu-Pago Pago run. The airline's fleet of leased planes is only five years old on average. The airline has operated as Hawaiian Airlines since it phased out Sikorsky flying boats in 1941, but before that it was Inter-Island Airlines from 1929. It is the oldest US airline to have never suffered a fatal accident.

Hawaiian is the only game in town for Samoans looking to get to or from Honolulu, Aloha Airlines having discontinued its own twice-weekly service to Pago Pago in January, 2005. "The airline did its best to be responsive to island communities in the remote Pacific region but can no longer use valuable assets with a consistently negative return," Aloha CEO David Banmiller said in 2004 of the decision to cancel Samoa (and Marshall Islands) service.

Several airlines fly between PPG and other Pacific Rim destinations. 

FMI: www.asg-gov.net, www.hawaiianair.com