This week, the Hawaii Tourism Authority released their visitor numbers for May, indicating a healthy increase year-over-year—and that's before last month's launches of Hawaiian Airlines' New York-Honolulu flights and United's Washington, D.C.-Honolulu flights.
Now that the flights are in the air and more are on the way, the HTA has released a new forecast that expects more growth in nonstop airlift for the third quarter of 2012. The projection is based on flights appearing in OAG and Diio Mi airlines schedules as of June 2012:
Total scheduled seat capacity to the state is expected to climb 12.6 percent during the third quarter, between July and September, in comparison to the same period last year. This increase is attributed by growth from domestic and most of Hawaii’s major international source markets, including new flights from New York and Washington, D.C. as of June 2012. With the anticipated increase in total air seats, third quarter seat capacity to the state is on track to reach record levels and exceed prior peak 2007 levels by 2.6 percent.
Scheduled third quarter seats from the U.S. West region are expected to rise 8.8 percent, with significant increases in capacity from Oakland (54.8 percent), San Diego (60.5 percent), San Jose (81.1 percent), Las Vegas (18.3 percent) and Los Angeles (11 percent) driving this growth.
Air seats from the U.S. East region are expected to increase by 25 percent in the third quarter, thanks in no small part to the addition Hawaiian and United Airlines’ non-stop flights from the East Coast. In addition, United is also expected to increase service from Houston (9.9 percent) during this period.
Photo courtesy of HVCB and Linda Ching