“What If” Hawaiian Airlines have grown to something bigger than itself if it took the growth model of Alaska Airlines, over a long period?
t’s fascinating to learn about the airline’s transition from being a Kamaaina (locally) owned company to being owned by many, but not by anyone in Hawaii. This history hasn’t been shared in the news of the buyout.
Here is the cliff notes version.
Indeed, if you go back in the history of Hawai‘i aviation and the issues of ownership and who operated, the mere fact that an airline that was not “Hawai‘i based” came in to buy a “Hawai‘i based airline” that didn’t elicit an immediate hearing in the State Capitol on the merits of it told me that, indeed, the relationship between the people of Hawai‘i, its government officials, and its aviation options, has very much changed.
The “formal end”, therefore would be May 11, 2023, and if one day a politician wants to make a new holiday for Americans to celebrate, that would probably be the date it’s pegged to. This is the date that all other rules were removed, and formally reverted to “full normal”.
Now, let us see if this example of reaching out takes hold with other politicians, and how they will interact with people when the Communication Director in their office is away.
What excites me about this possibility is the fact that this would be a forward-looking image of Honolulu that describes the potential of its future, and not continually reverting to a past that does not exist. It would be something that people, both tourists, and residents, could see as the progress of the city into the 21st Century
But at the end, a cage, even a gilded cage, is still that, a cage.
AnnaMaria Preston, Ed.D. is a friend of mine from my City Council days (2004-2008). Over the years since, she moved…
Over the past week, our government officials in Hawaii have been pivoting their “public” focus from the re-opening of the local (we call it Kama’aina) economy to that of the tourism economy.
To many, an exclamation of “about time” was raised as it is very clear that no real recovery can be made to Hawaii’s economy without the re-introduction of tourism into it.
The sky is quiet and the roads are empty. This is my observation