Interview: Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram

DALLAS — Connecting Hawaii to the skies since 1929, Hawaiian Airlines (HA) is not only a mode of transportation but an expression of Hawaiian culture through local hospitality coupled with operational excellence.

In a Nov. 17 interview, Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram told Airways how punctuality by way of rigorous inter-island operations enabled a cargo contract with Amazon. Ingram also detailed opportunities coming with the 2024 arrival of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners while hinting at the future of the airline's aging but essential Boeing 717s.

A little over two weeks later, Alaska Airlines (AS) acquired the Hawaiian carrier. The two airlines will share an operational platform, with the Hawaiian Airlines brand living on and connecting travelers to the islands with the welcoming spirit of Aloha.

Brent Foster: What do you consider to be the most significant competitive edge that sets Hawaiian Airlines apart from other airlines connecting the Hawaiian Islands to the world?

Peter Ingram: “I think the biggest difference between us and our competitors is that our people understand Hawaii in a way that our competitors, I don’t think, will ever be able to replicate. So many of our people live here, have grown up here, and are steeped in the culture.

The culture of the state has a huge influence on the culture of our business, and I think that bleeds into the way we care for our guests and the hospitality that we provide throughout the travel experience. I don’t know that anyone can deliver that better than our employees.”

How will the 2024 introduction of Boeing 787s elevate the customer experience at Hawaiian Airlines?

“I’m excited about it. It’s been a long time coming for a variety of reasons. We expected to have this airplane a long time ago, but between the pandemic and Boeing’s challenges with deliveries of the 787, we’ve pushed it back to early next year. It’s going to be a fantastic addition to our fleet. It gives us what is, in my opinion, the best, modern widebody that is available from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) right now.

It’s going to be a little bit larger than our A330s, and that will be particularly advantageous on routes that are a little bit deeper, where we can use a little bit of extra capacity, but there’s not enough demand to add a full extra frequency. We’re going to have a larger front cabin, which plays into the fact that the demand for premium products on the airplane has been expanding in recent years. Not just during the pandemic but even before that trend was underway.

I think how we’ve laid out the design of that airplane with a front cabin seat is going to set the standard for any airline flying to Hawaii, imbuing the elements of our brand and the natural beauty of the islands throughout the airplane. I think people are just going to love it. It’s going to set the standard for travel to Hawaii."

The Boeing 787-9 is set to join the Hawaiian Airlines fleet in 2024, promising to open new horizons for the Honolulu-based airline. Photo: Hawaiian Airlines

Will the Boeing 787 have additional Extra Comfort (premium economy) seating?

“Our 787-9s will have 79 Extra Comfort (premium economy) seats, up from the 68 Extra Comfort seats we currently have on our Airbus A330s. We have been progressively increasing the proportion of Extra Comfort seats due to high demand for the product, which we launched in 2014 with 40 seats on the A330.”

To what extent, if at all, will the Boeing 787 fleet allow Hawaiian Airlines to attract more passengers and serve new markets?

“Eventually, I think it will. In the short term, we have announced what the initial markets are going to be. We are going to be flying to the West Coast from Hawaii. That’s more for purely practical reasons. We do need a place to do overnight maintenance on that aircraft, and in our network, that typically is the western United States, where we get eight to 10 hours of touch time on an aircraft every third day.

Eventually, we want to get it to places like New York, Sydney, and Tokyo. Then, longer term, we will be looking at some other opportunities that we have both internationally and elsewhere in the eastern United States. There are some opportunities available for us, but we’re not prepared to announce exactly what we have in mind at this point.”

Where does Hawaiian Airlines conduct maintenance operations on the West Coast?

“For the 787, the initial overnight station on the west coast is going to be Los Angeles. We also have our mechanics in Seattle, and we do A321neo maintenance in a few other cities on the West Coast. But for the 787 initially, it’s going to be Los Angeles, where we’re going to be doing most of our overnight checks.”

Hawaiian Airlines is known as one of the most punctual air carriers in the United States. How does the airline keep its fleet running on time?

“I think it really starts with focus. This is something that started a little bit before I joined Hawaiian in 2005. The company put a focus on making sure we operated on time. I see the point from time to time about it being blue skies and sunshine most of the year in Hawaii. There’s an element to that that is true, but I also remind people that the 717 operation between the islands that we run is very unforgiving in a number of ways.

When you’re putting on 13 cycles, give or take, on a single aircraft over the course of a day, if you take one long delay earlier in the morning, that entire line of flying is set back, and there is no buffer time to be able to recover. We’re focused on making sure our teams deliver repeatable performance. Our team takes pride in having great operational reliability.

Candidly, if you look over the last 12 months or so, we’ve struggled as we’ve had some runway outages here in Honolulu. One of our runways was being refurbished, and that really set the airport back in terms of what its capacity was at the peak hours of the day, but I think the team has refocused. In the last few months, we’ve been back in the number one spot, and I think that focus is the most important thing to getting there. Just, you know, having a standard for operational excellence. That is what our guests expect and what we expect of ourselves to deliver.”

A long-standing workhorse on inter-island routes, how has the Boeing 717 effectively served the needs of Hawaiian Airlines?

“It’s hard for me to talk about the 717 without talking about the uniqueness of the neighboring island market. There are not any other places you can think of in the United States where there are four routes on which an airline is carrying five or six million passengers a year. The stage legs range, for those four routes, between about 100 miles and 250 miles.

100 miles to 250 miles anywhere on the U.S. mainland is a drive market. Even in Alaska, where you’ve got more short-haul flying because of the geographic conditions, they are not nearly as dense as the markets we serve in terms of the number of passengers.

The 717 over the last, now 20-plus years, has been almost a perfect airplane for us. It is a good size, with 128 seats, which allows us to have high frequencies but also carry the volume of traffic that we need to carry. It was engineered not to have transcontinental range, but we don’t need that when all we’re asking it to do is fly a few hundred miles at a time. It’s been very durable.

I think the biggest difference between us and our competitors is that our people understand Hawaii in a way that our competitors I don’t think will ever be able to replicate. So many of our people live here, have grown up here, and are steeped in the culture.

Peter Ingram

The 717 is a derivative of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft and the end of that generation of the MD-80s and the MD-95 before Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. McDonnell Douglas was always known for making durable aircraft, and when you’re putting as many cycles on the aircraft and flying in the geography we do, that has helped get us through the last 20 years.”

If eventually replaced, what characteristics will you look for in a successor to the Boeing 717?

“If I had my ideal scenario, I would probably go and order the same number of brand-new 717s if they were still producing the aircraft. For what we do, which is something very unique, it is as good or better than any available aircraft. That said, I know they’re not going to last forever as much as I wish they might.

I’ve talked a number of times in the last year about the fact that we are looking at a variety of alternatives, from things like A319ceos or A320ceos that would give us some commonality with our A321neo fleet to the two in-production aircraft that are in the appropriate size range with the A220 and the Embraer E195-E2.

We’ll probably make that decision over the next several months and then implement it over the next three, four, or five years. In the meantime, the 717 is going to continue to serve us well.”

How has Hawaiian Airlines adapted to effectively operate air cargo routes on behalf of Amazon? Are any Hawaiian Airlines aircraft specifically allocated for the Amazon contract?

“Yes, we’ve got one in operation right now, so it’s still very much in the early days. We flew our first freighter mission for Amazon on Oct. 2. Our team has done a very good job over the last year preparing for that, and we’re off to a successful start. In some ways, it is not too different from what we do from an operational perspective.

We’re flying in a different geography, and we don’t have any passengers on the airplane. With Amazon, one of the things that they’re most focused on is reliability. On-time performance is as important to them as it is for our passengers on Hawaiian Airlines flights, and we’re very keen to run a disciplined operation to make sure we deliver on that promise.

We’ll be ramping that up over the next 12 months or so to a 10-aircraft fleet, which is the initial size for which our contract is stipulated. Beyond that, as we move to deliver good performance to Amazon, they’ve got the option to add additional aircraft to the operation, and we would hope that our performance merits winning an even larger size of that business.”

What type of aircraft is Hawaiian Airlines operating for the Amazon contract?

“It’s an A330-300 that has been repurposed from a passenger configuration, but it was not one of Hawaiian’s aircraft. We’ve got A330-200s; the Amazon aircraft are going to be A330-300s.”

If I had my ideal scenario, I would probably go and order the same number of brand-new 717s if they were still producing the aircraft.

Peter Ingram

Beyond the partnership with Amazon, what role does air cargo play in Hawaiian Airlines operations on inter-island routes and across the Pacific?

“It’s an important revenue generator for us overall. It became even more important over the last couple of years with the dynamic cargo and passenger markets affected by the pandemic. We’ve always been focused on cargo.

It’s an important revenue contributor on some of our international routes in particular. Bringing perishables in from the U.S. mainland on our widebody flights is an important contributor. Even, as you say, the belly space on the 717s with the high-frequency service we have provides a lot of utility to people who need to ship non-containerized goods between the islands.

We’ve got a very focused cargo team. We moved into new hangars and cargo facilities a few years ago. This has helped our cargo operation in Honolulu, where we’ve got a much more modern facility for our team at our biggest hub. It’s been a good contributor for us. I haven’t looked at the numbers recently to see how the dynamics have changed post-pandemic.

Before the pandemic, I think that of all of the large passenger airlines in the United States we’ve probably had the highest proportion of our revenue that was contributed by cargo. Even more than the big three network carriers with their global operations and widebody fleets.”

How did Hawaiian Airlines assist recovery efforts amid the Maui wildfires earlier this year? Did Hawaiian Airlines’ air cargo capacity bolster recovery efforts?

“That was an incredible tragedy, and it was really hard for us to wake up the morning after the fires and try to contemplate the tragedy that had happened in Maui. It’s hard. All of us have a close affinity; Hawaii is really a connected place. It would be hard to find an employee at Hawaiian Airlines who didn't know someone who was touched by this disaster.

As we considered what our response needed to be, the first thought was that we’re the largest provider of passenger transportation between the islands. We need to make sure we are doing what needs to be done to get first responders and other people who need to be in Maui to Maui and to get people who have been displaced by the fires and tourists who need to go home out of Maui.

We really set about that mission with our team in Maui and made sure we had the support of everyone in the organization to do that.

I was incredibly proud of how we executed that.

With Amazon, one of the things that they’re most focused on is reliability. On-time performance is as important to them as it is for our passengers on Hawaiian Airlines flights, and we’re very keen to run a disciplined operation to make sure we deliver on that promise.

Peter Ingram

Over the first 72 hours after the fire, we evacuated thousands of people off Maui. We added extra aircraft to our schedule at that time. We were also, as you pointed out, dealing with the needs of shippers who needed to get things into the islands very quickly, moving goods and supplies where necessary. An incredible job was done by our team during that initial period.

Since then, we’ve been committed to being with Maui and supporting Maui for as long as it takes to get to a full recovery, which is going to be a long, long time. We’ve done that through our philanthropic efforts and the volunteerism of our employees. We set up a desk to handle requests for people who had needs, either to move people or to move goods into Maui.

It’s an incredible tragedy, but it’s something that we’re committed to supporting for the communities that we serve and the communities that mean so much to our employees. We’ll do whatever we can to make sure that Maui is not only back on its feet but as strong as ever as soon as we can get there.”

Hawaiian Airlines flies to some more remote destinations, like the Cook Islands and American Samoa. Do you see the airline as an important player in connecting the South Pacific to the world?

“The way I think about it is, you know, each time we embark on one of those opportunities, we know that we’re more than just another airline. When you live, as we do, in an archipelago in the middle of the Pacific that is very isolated, you understand the importance of air travel.

So, when we fly into a place like American Samoa it’s not with the thought that we’re going to have a very transactional relationship with the people there. It’s with the thought that transportation is essential when you are on an isolated island and air transportation in particular.

We’ve got to approach it from the standpoint that we’re going to be an important part of the community and work at it as a partnership with our employees who are based there, with the communities we serve, and with the governments in these communities to make sure that we’re doing what we can to support their transportation needs.” 

What is your vision for the future of Hawaiian Airlines going into 2024 and beyond?

“I think this is an exciting time for us with the 787 coming and Amazon service ramping up for us. We’ve come through a period over the last few years where there've been a lot of challenges in the external environment and where we’ve been investing in opportunities for the future.

I think, as we head into 2024, this is an opportunity for us to really start delivering on those investments. It all starts with delivering outstanding service to our guests, and I don’t think anyone in the industry has been better at that than Hawaiian Airlines, but we’re going to continue that focus. I think, as we do that, we’re going to have other opportunities for growth and expansion. We’re going to be prepared to take advantage of them as they arrive.”

Featured image: Hawaiian Airlines