A couple of weeks back, the folks at Beat of Hawaii (BOH)issued an article titled “Why Hawaiian Airlines Failed: A Story of Planes, Promises, And Pride”. In it, the two gentlemen at BOH laid out a case where the airline was either too poor or too stubborn to pivot for survival, thus leading it to be bought out by Alaska Airlines.

BOH’s argument boils down to this: Hawaiian’s leadership (at that time under CEO Peter Ingram) clung to outdated strategies — sticking with widebodies while competitors like Alaska built an efficient Hawaii network on narrowbodies. In their telling, that stubbornness sealed Hawaiian’s fate.

In a response this blogger made to a friend, who also is a watcher of commercial aviation in Hawaii, it was noted that some of BOH’s points have merit. But their larger conclusion leans too heavily on hindsight. By flattening complex circumstances into a neat morality play, they give Hawaiian Air too little credit for trying to adapt to factors it couldn’t control — and too much blame for decisions that, at the time, made sense.

In other words, the story attempted to use a neat narrative to describe the outcome, but left out pieces that, in context, made business decisions that made sense. Letʻs explain

Before COVID slammed the industry like an 18-wheeler barrelling down H1 at 90 mph, in March of 2020, the strategy of Hawaiianʻs fleet use and destinations was a bellwether of success. Their approach to bringing the Asian tourism market to Hawaii kept load factors steady. In their approach, the airline was able to quickly determine whether a route was a winner (most of the Japan routes) and which ones couldnʻt make it (Manila, Philippines, Taipei, Taiwan).

With COVID, the airline, along with everyone else in tourism, was looking for two things: the first was the reopening of tourism to Hawaii from anywhere. That happened first with the West Coast, which spiked the minute the State of Hawaii set up the COVID protocols when arriving. Economists assumed Japan would return in a few years.

What few foresaw was the yen collapsing nearly 50% against the dollar, making U.S. trips prohibitively expensive for Japanese travelers. That single factor, combined with Hawaii’s strict shutdowns, crippled the market Hawaiian depended. And that, even today, is still an issue plaguing the entire Hawaii tourism industry.

Now, provided that Hawaiian did think that its unique service model for passengers would rue the day when it came to airline choices, the fact is, forces beyond its control dictated travel behavior.

But even then, Hawaiian would still try to work its magic, if not for Japan, to other places. And Hawaiian did pivot. Routes to Orlando and Austin weren’t random gambles — they were deliberate attempts to replace lost Asian demand with new continental markets. That’s not the behavior of an airline clinging to the past. It’s the behavior of one fighting to adapt in impossible circumstances. One can easily argue that they tried all they could, once they realized it, to build new markets.

Going to the comparison that BOH made to Alaskaʻs strategy, and holding up their model as the one Hawaiian should have followed, the comparison (and potential relative success of it) only goes so far.

Alaska is, at its core, even today, a domestic carrier. It’s Hawaii playbook — West Coast routes on narrowbody planes — fit its network, cost structure, and customer base. Hawaiian, by contrast, was (and still is in name) an international-level airline. Its goal wasn’t just to fly Angelenos to Maui. It was to connect Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and beyond to Honolulu. Different strategies for different markets.

Yes, Hawaiian may have been late to adopt the Airbus A321neo. Yes, the interisland Boeing 717 aircraft replacement plan was muddled. But those were secondary to the macroeconomic and pandemic shocks. Suggesting, though, that Hawaiian “failed” because it didn’t become Alaska misses the fundamental point: it wasn’t trying to be Alaska.

Finally, a financing factor needs to be discussed – not in terms of revenue and expenses, but more about access to capital. As this blogger wrote last year about Hawaiian’s prospects for a new continental hub, the airline simply didnʻt have a lot of cash like Alaska did before the buyout. That limited its ability to get funding from markets or use its existing funds to expand. 

The challenge Hawaiian faced was that, with it being stretched already with debt for new airplanes (A321, Boeing 787s), along with a notably smaller revenue base, any attempt at a pivot would have very little margin for error.

So the airline, seeing its actions in this context, did what it could, with what it had.

At the end, Hawaiian Airlines, as an independent airline in the United States, didn’t fail, or at least didnʻt in the way BOH relays it. It was trying to address a quickly shifting market that no one could have predicted, and in the end got caught in forces that were beyond its control.

Turning Hawaiian’s story into a morality play might make for easy headlines, but it does little justice to the reality. The airline wasn’t blindsided by its own arrogance — it was sideswiped by Covid, by Hawaii’s own prolonged shutdowns, by Japan’s deep and ongoing economic struggles. To say it “failed” because it didn’t copy Alaska is to confuse hindsight with analysis.

What took Hawaiian down, instead, was a world that shifted underneath it. In that light, Hawaiian didn’t “fail.” It carried Hawaii as far as it could, until forces beyond its control became just too much.

And that, more than any headline, is the real story.

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The story about Hawaiian Airlines’ buyout by Alaska was covered by this blog from the month that the announcement came down on a Sunday in December. The series of reports was a second-place winner in the “Column Writing or Blog/Features or Sports” category in the 2024 Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalism awards given out last July.

Sometimes, all it takes to recollect a memory from the past is an email. That is what occurred on August 8^th when Hawaiʻi State Senator Donovan Dela Cruz issued his periodic e-newsletter, this time addressing the current issues with locating a new Oʻahu landfill.

But first, let’s catch up the reader on the current discussion of the siting.

Honolulu City and County Mayor Rick Blangiardi, based on a list of choices to site a new landfill, chose a location in Wahiawā, central Oʻahu, that is currently on prime agricultural land and is owned by Dole Food Company. It’s a 150-acre site that sits on top of a water aquifer.

In the face of increasingly loud opposition, Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz pushed Act 255, passed in 2025, which will now bar landfills over aquifers on Class A ag lands. These rules killed the City’s Wahiawā proposal. With Waimānalo Gulch set to close by 2028 (or 2032 if expanded), the City wants more time, while legislators (as said by Senator Dela Cruz) weigh revising buffer-zone rules to make other non-aquifer sites possible.

The one challenge was the fact that the selection was made to try and address the limits that the State put on the City in selecting a site, even before Act 255. That limited the number of sites that the City could choose from, of which the Dole land, at least to the City, seemed to be the least bad choice for a landfill.

With Act 255 signed into law, the City and the Mayor’s office simply said that their plan B was to go back to Waimānalo Gulch on the Waiʻanae Coast and file for permits to continue expanding it into the gulch that has been filled with garbage since the late 80s.

If one thinks, though, that this is the first time a controversial location and off-the-reservation thoughts of what to do with Oʻahu trash had been thrown out by the City, it isn’t by a long shot.

Back in this blogger’s first months working at the Honolulu City Council as a Legislative Aide in 2004, the city at that time was in the last throes of choosing a landfill that was proposed by a “Blue Ribbon Panel”, with it facing then what it faces now – the impending end of the permit to dump trash at Waimānalo Gulch, and a call by those on the Waiʻanae Coast to stop using it as Oʻahu’s dumping ground.

The Blue-Ribbon panel at the time selected four sites on the Waiʻanae Coast, and one in Kapa‘a Quarry in Kailua. At the time, the calls for removing it from Waiʻanae were strong. So, in trying to address the selection of a site, the politicians at the time, most notably Councilmember Rod Tam, as Public Works Committee Chairman, decided to take issues in their own hands and choose a site not on the list.

In early December 2004, at the City Council Chairman’s office – then occupied by now-Senator Donovan Dela Cruz – held a news conference in which Councilmember Tam announced that he would propose legislation to create the new dump in Koko Head Crater.

“Whaaaaat??!?” could be heard by everyone in that room, including by this rookie Legislative Aide, who knew that his boss – who represented the area of the proposed dump – would oppose it immediately.

In reporting at the time, it was suggested that the off-the-list choice by Councilmember Tam was to pressure other Councilmembers to agree to an even more daring choice – a 23-acre site next door to the Honolulu garbage-to-energy facility called “H-POWER”, to both initially dump trash there to be shipped out by a contractor to the mainland.

(Skipping to the end of the story, the plan to ship trash off-island fell apart, and the bales ended up landfilled at Waimānalo Gulch by 2011).

At the end of all the drama that occurred with the last time Oʻahu looked for a new landfill, it was decided to just file an extension of the permit at Waimānalo Gulch. This was made a shade more palatable by then-Mayor Mufi Hannemann providing a couple of million dollars to the impacted communities on the Waiʻanae Coast for community improvement programs.

At the end, the permit was extended…and if no new idea is brought up for a new site, the City will do the same thing again, and Waimānalo Gulch will continue to be Oʻahu’s dumpsite. The last extension asked to go to 2028, with possible capacity until 2032.

With that plan, which by many accounts seems to be the most feasible to solve the issue now, the decision of a new site will be kicked down the road once again, for as many years as the Land Use Commission gives the city permission to dump at Waimānalo.

But that does not mean that the City, in getting yet another extension, is showing any clairvoyance as to how to address this issue, once again, in years to come. While there have been many in the City that declared (mostly Mayors) that they would be the ones to solve this issue on their watch, the result has been more keeping to the status quo than becoming the maverick leader that solves the big problems.

And that might be the lesson in all this – big problems don’t lend themselves to quick-to-decide solutions. Mayor Blangiardi is only the latest leader in this state who has discovered the rock wall of opposition in Hawaiʻi, on any issue of controversy, is both well-built and able to withstand withering attack, both through policy and rhetoric.

If history is any guide, the rock wall will hold—and the City will end up right back where it started: extending Waimānalo Gulch.

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Politics Hawaii with Stan Fichtman received four awards for Journalism for 2024, including the Best 1-Person Online Features Site/1 Person Features Blog. It was also placed in stories related to SMS Marketing and Research’s shutdown, the marriage of Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines, and noted for innovative headlines in its 2024 entries.

Despite a tsunami warning earlier in the week, the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter went ahead and held its annual awards dinner and ceremony on the 31^st of July.

The ceremony is designed to recognize excellence in journalism in written, in voice, and by video in a variety of categories. Over the years, SPJ Hawaii has been able to open up the categories to encompass a larger variety of journalistic enterprises, including one-man blogs like Politics Hawaii with Stan Fichtman, while also recognizing “new media enterprises” like Civil Beat.

SPJ has been recognizing online journalism for a while now, with Malia Zimmerman’s Hawaii Reporter being one of the first online newspapers in Hawaii. SPJ has also expanded to other non-traditional sources such as corporate newsletters.

With that, how did Politics Hawaii do in the awards? First, a setup – Politics Hawaii went in for six awards this year, including the coveted A-Mark Prize for Investigative Reporting (for the SMS shutdown saga). That was one of two awards this year that came with monetary prizes, a fact that the emcees noted in their presentation.

Politics Hawaii was in contention, but in the end, the award went to Hawaii News Now for a report on mishandled human remains… an effort worthy of the award.

The rest of the awards were for categories that range from the best 1-person blog to the best headlines. Last year, Politics Hawaii went in for a few awards, and received one for the first time in first place, the Best 1-Person Online Features/1-Person Features Blog.

At the start of the ceremony, Politics Hawaii once again received First place for that award for its 2024 work. When walking up to receive the award, this blogger, who is also the publisher, looked at Stirling Morita, who runs SPJ Hawaii, and flashed two fingers to him, knowing that this is now the second year in getting the award.

Later on, after television, non-journalistic publications, such as corporate newsletters and student journalism, returned to the any-media category. That is where Politics Hawaii received more awards:

Second Place – Column Writing or Blog/Features or Sports
“The marriage of Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines – from proposal to taking the oath”

This was the combination of a number of stories that Politics Hawaii wrote about the merger of Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines from late 2023 to the actual merger in the latter part of 2024. Although it was a buyout of Hawaiian by Alaska, the way that the combination is unfolding has marriage vibes all over it.

 Third Place – Column Writing or Blog/News
“The shutdown of SMS Marketing and Research” (with Andrew Walden)

Mr. Walden was a key member in helping to unfold this story, as it was happening almost in real time. From the time that the tip came to Politics Hawaii, Mr. Walden was a helpful voice in directing the story and even doing some of the legwork by going to the offices to see what was happening, confirming the closure.

As an update, the story has gone a bit cold, the court case in New York was found in favor of the creditor, and Mr. Timothy Carlson has not been reached for further comment on the situation.

Third Place – Headlines
“Best headlines of Politics Hawai‘i, 2024”

The awarding of this entry was a surprise. This category is laced with many great writers from other publications who, if they are looking for something memorable, think long and hard about what type of headline to put on a piece. It was the same level of rigor that got Hawaii Business first place in the “Editorial Cartoon/Illustration” category for their piece “How We Live Now”.

So for Politics Hawaii to get any place in this category was a surprise. When walking up to get the award, someone in the audience even said, “Wow, you’re surprised!”.

Dang right!

For all those who won first place in categories, there was a short video where the judges’ comments were spoken. For the first place that Politics Hawaii got, the judges said the following,

“Reading these articles feels like receiving emails from a friend on topics I’m interested in. They make the reader feel like they are looped in on stories they are hungry to learn more about. Excellent writing style paired with good fact gathering.”

Entries for Hawaii were judged by the Louisville Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Considering that one source of information that this blogger gets on topics is the well-written “Letters from an American” by Heather Cox Richardson, her approach has been about sending a letter to a friend, telling them what is going on, with attached receipts.

Not to say that Politics Hawaii will become that way, the potential equivocation is nice, regardless.

All articles that are featured as a group can be found on the Politics Hawaii website. Punch in “Hawaiian Airlines” for the merger information, and “SMS” to see all the articles in the saga.

More information and the list of winners can be found at the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter website. The list is downloadable from the link.

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This is not successful without people helping establish it or cheer it on. One of them is Mr. Brandon Dela Cruz, who, about 10 years ago suggested that the domain name “Politics Hawaii” be obtained. It has proven to be a voyage of discovery between this blog, the podcast “Superfly Oz” that came before, and whatever will evolve from this. Brandon Dela Cruz is considered a co-founder and co-creator of the Politics Hawaii blog.