No refugees from the U.S. pullout in Afghanistan are yet scheduled to relocate to Hawaii, but Hawaiian Airlines on Wednesday rejoined the airline industry effort to help thousands of them resettle in America.
The first of two empty Hawaiian Airlines’ Airbus A330 278-seat, wide-body planes — marked in the airline’s normal logos and colors — left Honolulu for the East Coast on Wednesday and is expected to be followed by a second one tonight.
Hawaiian has 24 wide-body planes in its fleet.
Jon Snook, Hawaiian Airlines executive vice president and chief operating officer, declined to give specific details on the locations of Hawaiian’s routes but said the crews are expected to ferry as many as 1,000 Afghan passengers per day over three daily flights — one to the Southwest and two to the Midwest. The operation is scheduled to end Tuesday, depending on the situation.
The Department of Defense has again contracted with Hawaiian Airlines to join other U.S. airlines in resettling Afghan refugees as part of the DOD’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet.
The passengers will enjoy typical customer service, including service from Hawaiian’s flight attendants, spokesman Alex Da Silva said.
“It’s going to be full service,” he said.
Various media have reported that thousands of refugees being flown by Hawaiian, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines and others are expected to relocate Afghan refugees from at least Dulles International Airport in Virginia to temporary relocation centers at military bases including Marine Corps Base Quantico, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia; Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico; Fort Bliss in Texas; Fort McCoy in Wisconsin; and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.
Representatives of Hawaii’s Congressional delegation and Gov. David Ige’s office said there are no immediate plans to settle Afghan refugees in Hawaii.
Based on prior resettlements from other countries and cultures, the U.S. tends to relocate refugees to communities with existing populations and cultural ties, such as places of worship.
The latest effort by Hawaiian is the third of its kind helping to resettle refugees from wars in the Middle East, following Desert Storm in 1991 and Iraqi Freedom in the early 2000s.
In an internal message to Hawaiian employees, Snook wrote:
“I am proud of our contribution to this effort, knowing that the aloha and ho‘okipa exhibited by our crewmembers will provide a warm first impression of the United States and hopefully will begin to ease some of the psychological turmoil of recent events that our Afghan guests experienced in their former homeland.”
Should the Department of Defense decide to relocate Afghan refugees to Hawaii, Snook told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that Hawaiian would be proud to participate in helping them get here.
“We’d be happy to help with a humanitarian mission in whatever way we could best serve,” he said.
Correction: Hawaiian Airlines’ charter flights during the last two weeks through the Asia-Pacific for the Department of Defense were related to troop movements and not Hawaiian’s current involvement in helping settle Afghan refugees in America, as was reported in an earlier version of this story.
