HAWAIIAN AIRLINES, long a leader in airline customer-satisfaction scores (perhaps because many of its passengers find themselves in Hawaii at the end of their flights, but also because it is remarkably good at arriving on time), has expanded aggressively in recent years.
The expansion of America's visa-waiver programme—a decision by President Barack Obama's administration that this blog has praised—has made it easier for people from many Asian countries to travel to the United States without visas, and Hawaiian has tried to take advantage. The airline recently announced a new service to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. But that's just one of nine new destinations Hawaiian has confirmed in recent years; the others are Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Seoul, New York City, Brisbane and Auckland. The company has expanded "more aggressively than any domestic carrier" over the past few years, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. It's even hiring.
One takeaway here is that the visa-waiver programme is doing exactly what it was supposed to do—expanding travel and tourism between America and the countries included in the programme, and presumably increasing economic activity. But there's still lots of room for Mr Obama's administration to do more, and the US Travel Association has a great plan to further improve the situation.
Hawaii is, of course, best known as a vacation destination. But tourism is big business, too, and it will be interesting to see if Hawaiian can earn significant business-travel traffic to and from Asian destinations, and whether the airline can defy the iron law of American domestic carriers; namely, that only Southwest consistently makes money. (So far, the airline's expansion plan seems to have been working, with margins improving year-on-year.) Maybe the powers that be at The Economist should send me on a trip to Hawaii to investigate further.
