State transportation officials have scrapped plans to build a new commuter terminal as part of the broader face-lift underway at Honolulu Airport.
The change leaves the future home of two interisland airlines up in the air.
Meanwhile, the overall $1.5 billion airport renovation project is about three years behind schedule. It’s now slated to finish in 2020 instead of in 2017, state officials say.
The 35,000-square-foot commuter terminal was to be built next to Gate 6 of the Diamond Head Concourse and would have served as a new home for the smaller interisland carriers. However, two of the four carriers in the original lineup to operate there — go! and Pacific Wings — have since left Hawaii.
State officials doubt that the two remaining carriers, Island Air and Mokulele, could afford the lease for what’s now estimated to be a $41 million terminal. In 2013, prior to escalating construction prices seen across Hawaii, the state had estimated that it would cost $27 million to build.
Mokulele President and CEO Ron Hansen said he agreed that the two small interisland companies wouldn’t be able to cover the costs for the terminal by themselves. It’s unlikely other carriers would come to Hawaii to fill the gap left by go! and Pacific Wings, he added.
“We don’t know how it’s going to impact us, operationally or financially,” Hansen said Tuesday of the canceled commuter terminal. Crews will eventually have to demolish the facility where Mokulele and Island Air airlines currently operate. In its place, crews will build a terminal that can accommodate larger planes.
That leaves Mokulele and Island Air in limbo as to where they’ll operate at Honolulu Airport.
“Operating small aircraft like we do, they don’t mix well with big jets. They almost have to be in a segregated area,” Hansen said. Honolulu represents a significant site for the Kona-based airline, which runs about 30 flights a day out of Honolulu Airport, he said. The airline runs between 120 and 150 flights a day across the islands, he added.
Hansen said he hopes to meet with state Department of Transportation officials later this week. “At this point it’s premature to speculate what the plan is,” he said.
“We will be meeting with the Department of Transportation to discuss future plans,” Island Air CEO Dave Pflieger said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “In the meantime, it’s business as usual at Island Air as we continue to operate out of our existing location at the Honolulu International Airport commuter terminal.”
Protests against awarded construction bids have contributed to the renovation project’s delays, particularly for the airport’s new consolidated car rental facility, dubbed the “CONRAC,” DOT spokesman Tim Sakahara said Tuesday. The renovation is taking a phased approach, and if any one phase gets behind schedule it affects the others, he said.
The CONRAC is now slated for 2020 completion. Until then, an interim car rental facility will continue to operate in the overseas parking garage using some 800 parking spaces, across from baggage claims F and G, he said.
The airport’s recently opened International Parking Garage made 1,800 spaces available for public use, to help make up for the spaces taken by the interim rental car facility, Sakahara added.
Nonetheless, visitors and the public will have to contend with several more years of construction than previously planned.
Sakahara said DOT didn’t yet have an estimate on how much more the project will cost due to the delays. Airport fees fund the renovation effort — not state general fund dollars, DOT officials say.
The open area where the commuter terminal had been planned will remain as is for now and may be considered for future expansion, Sakahara said.
