Strengthening Japanese demand boosts Hawaiian Airlines, but fleet challenges continue

The welcome return of Japanese leisure travel is helping Hawaiian Airlines rebuild its international traffic, although fleet headaches are constraining the airline’s ability to fully leverage surging international demand.

Whereas Hawaiian’s other international markets recovered strongly after borders opened, Japanese outbound demand was much slower to rebound. A few months ago Hawaiian was seeing some promising signs that this trend was starting to reverse, and results since then have backed this up.

Capacity is still below pre-pandemic levels on Japan-Hawaii routes, but many more seats on these flights are now occupied.

Hawaiian is one of the airlines that have been affected by aircraft groundings related to Pratt & Whitney engine issues in the A320neo and A321neo fleets. This problem has been dragging on for several months, and new issues with the engines appear likely to extend it further.

Also on the fleet side, Hawaiian has to adjust its plans to account for another – albeit short – delay in its first Boeing 787 delivery.