AirAsia X is seeking to begin the first-ever service from Malaysia to Hawaii before the end of the year.
The low-cost, long-haul airline of the AirAsia Group is proposing to fly four times a week between Kuala Lumpur and Honolulu beginning Nov. 1, with a stop in Osaka, Japan, according to an application filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Malaysian carrier said it will use Airbus A330-300 aircraft with 12 premium seats and 365 economy seats. It would be the airline’s first flight to any U.S. destination.
"AAX expects the Southeast Asia Region to continue to be a large and attractive feeder market for its long-haul routes," AirAsia said in its filing. "AirAsia X’s proposed service would offer the only direct flights between Honolulu and Malaysia, and thus would serve to strengthen ties between the two countries."
The airline currently serves 18 cities in Asia, Australia and Saudi Arabia with a fleet of 18 A330s.
Talks with AirAsia and the Hawaii Tourism Authority have been ongoing "for quite a while," said David Uchiyama, vice president of brand management for the HTA. "We’ve been in discussions with them for four or five years now. As we’ve mentioned before, we see all of the Asia-Pacific, including Southeast Asia, as being areas for the most growth potential because of direct accessibility (to Hawaii)."
Uchiyama said AirAsia, during discussions with the HTA, had been undecided about whether to refuel in Nagoya or Osaka, adding that those plans could change, as could the Nov. 1 target date.
"Just because they filed doesn’t mean they’re actually going to fly as of yet," Uchiyama said. "They have a target startup, but they still need to work through some operational issues before we have a set commitment with them. They still need to talk to us about space at Honolulu Airport, what the fees are and ground service contractors. We have sent data to them, but I don’t know how far they’ve gone as far as looking through it all."
Uchiyama said AirAsia is targeting Honolulu now because it has different aircraft that make the trip more economically feasible.
"When we first started discussions, AirAsia was flying Airbus 340s, and they were quite honest in saying that it wasn’t a fuel-efficient aircraft and wouldn’t yield well in routing to Hawaii," Uchiyama said.
AirAsia X, which has been operating since 2007, is part of the wider AirAsia group, which includes subsidiary Indonesia AirAsia, which had a plane that crashed in December into the Java Sea during bad weather on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore, killing all 162 people aboard.
"Most of these carriers spend quite a bit of time on safety and maintenance, and even the best of them, like Lufthansa, have unfortunately run into circumstances," Uchiyama said.
Lufthansa is the parent company of Germanwings, which crashed on March 24, resulting in the death of 150 people. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, according to investigators, deliberately crashed the plane into the French Alps on a flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany.
