More than five years after shutting down the route, Hawaiian Airlines celebrated the restart of service between Honolulu and Fukuoka, Japan, on Tuesday morning with a festive gate-side celebration.
The four-times-a-week nonstop service becomes Hawaiian’s fifth gateway in Japan. The others are Osaka, Sapporo and Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports. Hawaiian now operates 35 weekly nonstop flights between Japan and Hawaii and will begin additional daily service between Honolulu and Haneda on March 28.
Tuesday’s flight aboard an Airbus A330 aircraft departed Honolulu at 11:20 a.m. and is scheduled to arrive in Fukuoka at 5:55 p.m. today. The inaugural return flight is scheduled to depart Fukuoka at 7:55 p.m. today and arrive in Honolulu at 8:45 a.m. today due to the crossing of the international dateline.
“Fukuoka and Honolulu share a special relationship, so we’re thrilled to bring local residents of Kyushu and Hawaii one step closer to their vacation with our convenient nonstop service,” said Theo Panagiotoulias, Hawaiian’s senior vice president of global sales and alliances.
Hawaiian, which made its first Honolulu flight to Fukuoka on April 16, 2012, dropped service between the two cities in June 2014 due to low demand.
“Unfortunately, despite two years of effort, we have not seen sufficient passenger growth to justify continuing the service,” then Hawaiian President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dunkerley said at the time.
Fukuoka is the economic center of Kyushu, the southernmost major Japanese island. Hawaii has strong historical ties to Fukuoka dating back to 1885 when the first 149 immigrants arrived on the ship Yamashiromaru to work in Hawaii following King David Kalakaua’s signing of a treaty of reciprocity with Japan.
A century later, in 1981, Hawaii passed a resolution establishing a sister-state relationship with Fukuoka prefecture, the first one in Hawaii’s history. Then-Hawaii Gov. George Ariyoshi, whose father, Ryozo Ariyoshi, came to Honolulu from Fukuoka, led the sister-state initiative.
Ariyoshi and wife Jean later flew on Hawaiian’s inaugural flight to Fukuoka in 2012.
Star-Advertiser editor Dave Segal contributed to this report.
