Isle officials expect December will draw 1 million to airport
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / 2013
State officials are expecting more than 1 million passengers this month at Honolulu Airport, with some of the busiest travel days over the holiday weekend and long lines at security checkpoints.
State officials are expecting more than 1 million passengers this month at Honolulu Airport, with some of the busiest travel days over the holiday weekend and long lines at security checkpoints.
The state Department of Transportation expects the number of passengers arriving and departing through the airport to be roughly the same as the 1.2 million travelers in December 2015.
The Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, said it has increased staffing and canine teams and is monitoring and deploying resources in anticipation of “record-setting numbers at our nation’s airports this year.”
TSA is projecting to screen more than 100 million passengers from Nov. 15 through Jan. 7.
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“Usually the busy time is the week before Christmas to New Year’s. It does also depend on what day the holidays fall on,” said DOT spokeswoman Shelly Kunishige. “It’s not like Thanksgiving where it falls on the same day of the week every year. There’s not as much pressure to get home on just that one holiday. Usually for Christmas they either want to get there on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Everybody has their different traditions. Of course, with Christmas you also have people bringing in presents and those kinds of things that could also hold up security lines.”
Hawaiian Airlines will carry about 380,000 passengers, up less than 1 percent year over year, from Dec. 23 to Jan. 2.
Hawaiian’s peak travel dates to the neighbor islands are Dec. 23 and 26, and Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 from the neighbor islands to Honolulu. Peak travel days coming in from the mainland are Friday and Christmas Eve, while the busiest returning days are Jan. 1 and 2, the airline said.
“We do have very full flights. Our flights to the mainland will be more than 90 percent full,” said Hawaiian spokeswoman Ann Botticelli. “We will also see more holiday traffic in January because school breaks are starting later this year. We’ve been working with TSA and have been able to get the wait lines to a very manageable level, about 15 minutes. Nonetheless, we do encourage people to come to the airport two hours prior to mainland flights. There is still a lot of congestion at the curb, where people drop off their travelers.”
2 responses to “Isle officials expect December will draw 1 million to airport”
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What a dreary dark and flawed the airport is. It was never designed or constructed with any skill. The usual massive corruption under Waihee apparently hurt the construction.
Honolulu was a good airport for its era – the 20th century. Now people want Shopping Mall airports, and are willing to pay a $20 tax (built into your ticket price) for the privilege of walking through a shopping mall on the way to your airplane.