When Kristina Gomez learned her elderly parents on Moloka‘i were impacted by the abrupt closure of a main grocery store in the town of Kaunakakai due to COVID-19 cases, she wanted to find a way to help. A Hawaiian Airlines guest service agent in Honolulu, Gomez reached out to our leadership team late last week, suggesting we set up a transportation service between O‘ahu and Moloka‘i to assist the rural island’s residents.

Teams with Hawaiian Air Cargo and ‘Ohana by Hawaiian – our turboprop operations offering passenger service to Moloka‘i – worked through the weekend discussing requirements of the proposed service, consulting with local government officials, and obtaining necessary TSA approvals.

Starting today, ‘Ohana by Hawaiian will begin providing complimentary transportation of food and household items from O‘ahu to both Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i.

“There was a shared desire by community members and government officials to offer transportation service for essential items to Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i. It was great to see our team band together to launch a complimentary shipping program in a few short days,” said Blaine Miyasato, managing director of state government affairs at Hawaiian Airlines. “A special mahalo to state Sen. J. Kalani English and Rep. Lynn DeCoite, as well as our TSA partners for their support of this effort.”

‘Ohana by Hawaiian flights operated by Empire Airlines with ATR 42 aircraft will transport, at no cost, up to two packages from O‘ahu shippers sending food and/or household items to Moloka‘i or Lāna‘i. Shippers must present a valid ID and adhere to maximum package weight and size restrictions and program guidelines before dropping off items between 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Monday through Friday at our Hawaiian Air Cargo facility. Cargo space will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis to the first 25 customers per flight each day. Shippers are encouraged to contact us at (808) 835-3799 prior to coming to our facility.
 

Receiving customers can pick up their shipments at the Moloka‘i (MKK) or Lāna‘i (LNY) airports within one hour of the following ‘Ohana by Hawaiian arrivals:

• Molokai, HA 672 scheduled arrival is 5:01 PM*
• Lanai, HA 684 scheduled arrival is 7:16 PM*
  _{*Please check HawaiianAirlines.com for flight status.}

"Empire Airlines has had the privilege of providing service and support to the communities of Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i for over six years and we are humbled by the spirit that prevails in these communities," said Pieter Meinster, manager of Hawaiian operations at Empire Airlines. "The need to support these communities has never been greater and we stand ready to continue supporting the people of Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i in whatever manner we are able."

“I am so elated to hear of the service that Hawaiian Airlines will be providing Moloka‘i residents,” Gomez said. “I cannot express the overwhelming gratitude I have for Hawaiian and their willingness to help the people of Moloka‘i during this difficult time!”

As the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly derails vacations, weddings, honeymoons, family reunions and other Hawai‘i travel, our Hawaiian Airlines ‘ohana has come together to support tens of thousands of guests with their reservations.

In response to a rapid and unprecedented influx of inquiries, our IT, customer contacts, project management and facilities teams worked around the clock to set up a supplemental contact center at our Honolulu headquarters on March 20.

Two of our employee volunteers answer calls during their shift at our supplemental contact center in Honolulu.

In the past several weeks, over 160 employees from across the company – from airport operations and procurement to network planning and executive leadership – have picked up the phone or reached out on social care to more promptly assist guests. Volunteers have logged an average of 1,730 hours each week answering inquires, messaging guests via text and our mobile app, replying to emails and assisting with back-office processes.

Our employees who volunteer with social care are able to assist guests on our social media channels while they practice social distancing working from home.

“It was great to be able to help out on the phones,” Avi Mannis, senior vice president of marketing at Hawaiian Airlines, said after a recent shift. “A lot of what’s going on right now feels out of our control and we’re spending a lot of time reacting to things that we couldn’t anticipate even a month ago, so there’s something really satisfying – and almost comforting – about assisting with someone’s reservation.”

Kanani Kealoha-Faleafine stepped away from her day job as Hawaiian’s manager of loyalty services to train our volunteer force. As a former reservations manager for over four years, Kealoha-Faleafine had supported our contact centers based in the Philippines – where work has also been disrupted due to government-issued orders – and understood the ins-and-outs of our systems.

Kealoha-Faleafine (pictured right) assisting one of the temporary contact center's volunteers with a complex case.

“Even though we’re in uncharted territory, it’s calming to know that employees can still support the company but in our own unique way,” she said. “My team is teaching new tools to people who have never used our reservation management systems before, so we had to develop a training process where newcomers could feel comfortable and supported before starting to answer calls.”

Kealoha-Falaefine views the contact center as an inspiring example of our employees’ shared commitment to serve guests with hospitality during a stressful time.

Our employee volunteers all agree their experiences helping guests at this difficult time have instilled a strong sense of community within our company.

“We were all touched by our guests' stories, such as someone who was supposed to come to Hawai‘i for their wedding or making a trip to visit their grandkids and reassuring them that we’ll be here for when they’re ready to come,” she said.

Call volumes are still extremely high, but thanks to the help we’ve received from our ‘ohana, we are working through it and seeing progress each day.

Moving Forward and Improving

Despite being able to significantly lower contact wait times, an enormous backlog of guest requests remains.

We are continuing to invest in capabilities to better manage the volume of requests. For example, our IT teams have launched enhancements to our website and mobile app to allow guests to make changes to their travel, and we continue to identify and implement improvements. We’re also working to increase capacity in other contact channels like text messaging, chat and social care, which were temporarily overwhelmed by the influx.

For their convenience, our guests can change or cancel flights via our website or our mobile app.

“We know we’ve let our guests down when they needed us the most,” Mannis added. “But it has been heartening to see people from across our company working side-by-side to make this right and support our guests in a trying time.”

Resources available to you

We’re here to help, and guests with upcoming travel impacted by COVID-19 developments have options, including:

Call, email or message us

Our contact center is available 24 hours, seven days a week to assist with travel questions and concerns. Guests may also reach us by text and chat  (via our website and mobile app).

Guests in our international network should dial their country phone number when trying to contact us (hours of operation may vary). For more information, click here.

Request to change or cancel your ticket online

Our guests can request to change or cancel their reservation online. For more details on how, click here.

Find the answer to your questions or review our latest travel waivers, available here.

The COVID-19 situation is constantly changing, and we encourage our guests to visit our website frequently to stay informed about our latest schedule changes and travel waivers.

You may have seen the photos and videos of runway 8L and Taxiway Foxtrot at Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), where we have temporarily parked many of our Hawaiian Airlines aircraft due to COVID-19 developments affecting travel.

As the only major Hawai‘i-based airline, with over 90 years of service to our community, images of our fleet on the ground and not in the sky serve as a powerful daily reminder of the severity of this crisis. At any given time, at least 52 aircraft in our 61-jet fleet can be seen resting on HNL’s tarmac, waiting for the moment they can reconnect Hawai‘i to the world.

Airbus A330s lined up on runway 8L at HNL.

While we rotate certain aircraft in a significantly reduced schedule designed to maintain essential connectivity for our community and shippers, including complimentary Neighbor Island flights to healthcare providers this month, our parked planes continue to get plenty of care from our mechanics. Our roughly 500-person maintenance team – from mechanics to engineers and supply agents – has been working around the clock to properly service our aircraft and keep our fleet in tip-top flying shape to bring our full network back online when we are ready to do so.

“Working during this COVID-19 pandemic is surreal. Every day we come to work, we see nearly the entire fleet of aircraft grounded,” said Brandon Ho, line aircraft mechanic at Hawaiian. “Regardless, we still show up to work and do our job to assure the planes are fit to fly when the time comes.” 

During a visit to our Honolulu maintenance hangar, Jonathan Yang, director of line maintenance, inspects slight damage to an aircraft's shell. His team is hard at work servicing our fleet, including reporting, mapping out and repairing any fuselage damage.

Our transpacific routes now include one daily non-stop flight between HNL and San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX). Three of our 24 long-haul wide-body Airbus A330s are taking turns operating these two routes, while the remaining aircraft receive ongoing service. We also deploy A330s on our now once-weekly nonstop flights connecting HNL and Pago Pago in American Samoa; however, we have suspended this service through at least April 23 at the request of the U.S. territory government as it seeks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Airbus A330s lined up on runway 8L at HNL.

Our current fleet of 17 A321neos, our mid-range narrow-body aircraft that serve smaller U.S. West Coast markets, are all parked. We are rotating through our Neighbor Island passenger fleet of 20 Boeing 717s to keep all aircraft running. Our ‘Ohana by Hawaiian operations are following a similar process with two of its ATR 42 passenger aircraft serving the more rural communities of Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i, as well as the all-cargo ATR 72 fleet moving products between the islands.

Throughout the day and night, our maintenance teams are hard at work at our Honolulu hub and destination stations to ensure our planes remain fine-tuned and ready to fly. They’ve got their tools in hand to perform both multi-level checks required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as the aircraft and engine manufacturers, and daily maintenance on the engines and airframe. This work is done regardless of whether the aircraft has flown.

Photo credit: Mitchell Leighton Igcasenza

Our maintenance team has taken this downtime to service every part of our aircraft, including our engines.

“Aircraft maintenance tasks run on clocks. Even though we are flying a reduced flight schedule, the clock keeps ticking and mostly does not care if an airplane is in the air or not,” said Jonathan Yang, director of line maintenance at Hawaiian. Yang oversees 111 line mechanics who, despite an industry-wide slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, remain busy taking care of each of our planes.

One of our mechanics repairing a piece of sheet metal on the lower portion of a fuselage.

Our mechanics clock in a collective 120 hours each day just performing overnight checks on our 717s.* For our transpacific fleet, mechanics are busy conducting various checks scheduled on weekly, bimonthly, monthly, tri-monthly, and annual intervals.

“We have to continue doing these periodic checks to verify that certain systems and/or components of an aircraft are operating normally. This allows our fleet to remain in a flight-ready condition,” Yang added.

A Boeing 717 undergoing routine service during a sunny day at HNL. Our 717s are rotating through our reduced Neighbor Island schedule to allow for regular maintenance on each aircraft.

In addition to the scheduled tasks, which include routine maintenance from checking tire pressures and maintaining oil levels, our engineers and mechanics are focused on improving the in-flight experience for our guests by making modifications to optimize A321neo cabin temperatures – which is estimated to take mechanics some 140-180 hours per aircraft. We are also conducting robust cabin interior inspections, repair of seats and tray tables and deep cleaning throughout.

Yang inside a stripped-down Airbus A321neo cabin, which is being retrofitted with additional ventilation tubes beneath the floor. The modification is being done to a handful of A321neos and will optimize interior air temperature and circulation.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for all of us and temporarily changed the landscape of the aviation industry, our guests can remain confident in the safety and reliability that Hawaiian Airlines has been known for over 90 years.

“We all work together to ensure our aircraft are ready to fly when this situation is over. It's been challenging as this is all new to everyone. Flexibility has been key to staying positive and focused on the main goal of protecting our aircraft for the return of our great company to full operational status,” said Joe Mooney, a line aircraft mechanic at Hawaiian. “The maintenance of our planes has continued as we transition to putting them to bed, so to speak. They are resting for the big awakening, which will hopefully come sooner rather than later. I have no doubt that our team at Hawaiian Airlines will roar back to full operations soon and continue our honored tradition of sharing Hawai‘i with the world.”

*An FAA requirement that requires us to check each aircraft every 48 hours regardless of flight hours logged.

The Hawaiian proverb “Kōkua aku, kōkua mai, pēlā ihola ka nohona ʻohana” translates to “Family life requires an exchange of mutual help and recognition.” In Hawaiʻi, ʻohana includes immediate and extended family, with each member coming together and recognizing how their kōkua (assistance) contributes to the greater good.

As Hawai‘i’s flagship carrier, Hawaiian Airlines is passionate about the wellbeing of our local communities – especially during the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 virus. As we face the pandemic’s impact on the state’s tourism industry and aviation sector, aloha continues to permeate through our employees’ work – both on and off the job.

Hawaiian Airlines employees practicing social distancing during a group photo at a recent Team Kōkua event. To keep one another safe, volunteers are required to practice social distancing at all Team Kōkua events.

Our all-employee volunteer group, Team Kōkua, has played a pivotal role in engaging our colleagues and coordinating opportunities for people wanting to help when it’s needed the most.

“For me the real value of kōkua is to live into that verb – of the doing, of the experiencing,” said Debbie Nākānelua-Richards, director of community and cultural relations at Hawaiian Airlines. “We haven’t needed to put volunteer calls out as much in the past several weeks as a result of so many employees across our organization coming to us and saying, ‘help me find a way to give back.’ I think there is something wonderful to be said about that…it’s been incredible.”

Team Kōkua recently helped Lanakila Meals on Wheels prepare and deliver food for O‘ahu's kūpuna.

Team Kōkua has remained steadfast in helping local partner organizations, including Lanakila Meals on Wheels and Hawaii Foodbank, maintain critical services to our most vulnerable neighbors.

Caring for Our Kūpuna with Lanakila Meals on Wheels

Lanakila Meals on Wheels prepares and delivers some 30,000 nutritious meals each month to over a thousand kūpuna (elderly) statewide.

Their services have become increasingly important to kūpuna who are at a greater risk of health complications from COVID-19 and rely on the organization’s food aid.

Insulated bags packed with food ready to be delivered to kūpuna on O‘ahu.

“There’s so much value in giving back to a place like Lanakila, whose whole impetus started in 1939,” said Nākānelua-Richards. “It’s incredible to think about the origins of our organizations and how we were around at the same time. Being able to come together during challenging times is a true reflection of our strong relationship.”

“I started delivering for Lanakila Meals on Wheels in 2017 with my daughter Chloe’s school,” said Rhonda Matthews, senior director of human resources at Hawaiian Airlines. “We continue to volunteer because the relationships we have with the kūpuna we deliver to means so much to us. It’s nice to see the purple Team Kōkua T-shirts sprinkled throughout Lanakila.”

Rhonda Matthews and her daughter Chloe preparing to deliver a packaged meal to a Lanakila Meals on Wheels family.

Matthews recently joined Team Kōkua with home deliveries, driving through O‘ahu neighborhoods as her daughter reads off the names and addresses of the day’s recipients from the backseat. At each stop, they carry the carefully packaged meals from their car to each kupuna's doorsteps.

Clayton Arakawa, home delivery supervisor at Lanakila Meals on Wheels, recalls that “Hawaiian Airlines has always been there.”

Debbie Nākānelua-Richards pictured during a recent Team Kōkua event at Lanakila Meals on Wheels.

Reflecting on the community’s longtime support of his group, he says he enjoys seeing volunteer relationships grow stronger.

“They literally become family. We have regular Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday groups, and they have a lot of fun doing it. They become a community of friends,” Arakawa said. “You also see mothers and daughters delivering, husbands and wives, and they build excellent relationships with these kūpuna. And most times, for these kūpuna, the highlight of their day is seeing these volunteers.”

Helping Local Families with the Hawaii Foodbank

The Hawaii Foodbank has spent the last 35 years ensuring that no one in Hawaiʻi goes hungry, and its role has become even more critical as the COVID-19 economic fallout impacts communities statewide. Last year the Hawaii Foodbank distributed about one million pounds of food per month, reaching one in eight families throughout Hawaiʻi. However, Marielle Terbio, director of community engagement and volunteer at Hawaii Foodbank, says the number has gone up and will continue to grow.

Hawaii Foodbank has expanded their safety rules, which now prioritizes social distancing and the use of personal protection equipment to protect volunteers and beneficiaries.

“For me, the mission was very important,” Terbio said. “I grew up in a single-parent household, low-income family, and that’s primarily who Hawaii Foodbank serves. We see Hawaiʻi as one ʻohana.”

“We’ve seen an uptick in the food that’s going out,” she explained. "Many people in the community have lost or are at risk of losing their job, and some aren't even able to work because they are caring for their keiki who are not at school or family members who are sick." 

Team Kōkua volunteers helping sort fresh produce before it gets distributed to local families.

In response to the nonprofit’s growing needs, Team Kōkua has spent some 134 hours helping Hawaii Foodbank staff sort food inventory over the past two weeks. Together, over 50 volunteers organized an influx of food donations including produce, canned goods, and bread, for families facing hardship.

“I really appreciate their sincere want to kōkua and willingness to do what it takes to fulfill the mission, their reliability, and most importantly, that they do it with a smile,” Terbio said.

Elisa Asato helping pack food while volunteering at the Hawaii Foodbank.

After helping sort produce at a recent volunteer shift, Elisa Asato, marketing promotions specialist at Hawaiian Airlines, said, “I am lucky that I get to volunteer because I know that there are people out there who cannot help at this time. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, so if I can make someone laugh, it helps to brighten up everyone’s day. The saying is true, ‘A smile goes a long way.’”

Giving back in times like these is vital, Asato added. “It’s so important that we continue to help nonprofit organizations like Lanakila Meals on Wheels and Hawaii Foodbank when we’re able to,” she said. “Even dedicating a few hours of your time to help can make a huge difference.”

Learn more about our Team Kōkua Giving Program here. If you're interested in volunteering alongside our employees, click here for Hawaii Foodbank opportunities and here for Lanakila Meals on Wheels.