Southwest Airlines Announces Service To Hawaii
With that Tweet low cost air carrier Southwest Airlines announced that very soon you and I will be able to utilize their services to fly to Hawaii. For those that love to travel and choose to travel on a budget this is great news.
The air carrier has plans to begin service to the islands in 2018. The airline is expected to file paperwork with the FAA in the very near future that would allow the carrier to provide service to Hawaii.
Southwest is well known by budget travelers for offering extremely low prices and no frills in the friendly skies. Personally, the only thing I don't like about Southwest is the boarding procedure that turns into a cattle call with carry on bags but that's just me.
Here's the full statement from Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly:
I just shared with our Employees at our Spirit Party at Universal Studios: we’re going to Hawaii, baby! That’s right—the day is finally here that we can say we’re going to add some Aloha to our world-famous Hospitality, as Southwest Airlines will soon serve the Hawaiian Islands!
We intend to begin selling tickets in 2018, and while we’re not quite ready to offer our Customers specific schedule or market information, tonight’s announcement is going to be big news within the industry. Those Southwest shockwaves of our terrific value and bar-setting Customer Service will be a game-changing addition in the U.S. transpacific market.
You may have heard us purposefully changing our language ahead of tonight’s announcement to say it’s a matter of when, and not if we serve Hawaii. Why now?
We need to take our Extended Operations (ETOPS) work to the next level and gain FAA certification of ETOPS-equipped aircraft in our fleet and establish required operational processes to offer our Customers nonstop service they expect from California to one of the world’s top leisure destinations. The MAX will be our Hawaii aircraft but, we’ll start with our ETOPS-equipped -800 fleet to accelerate our service launch date.
The rest of the work is lined up to bring the performance enhancements of the MAX to what we intend to build into a multi-market offering among our west coast cities and the Hawaiian Islands.
Because this will be big news for the media and our Investors who have also waited for this day, we’ve also posted video of the Employee announcement on swamedia.com, where you’ll also be able to read our news release.
Mahalo to you all as we work to bring America’s Most Loved airline to the shores of Hawaii–and I find it fitting that’s about as far Southwest as you can go in the U.S!