- Jet fuel has risen by two thirds in the past year.
- Aloha has an older fleet -- gas guzzlers, in other words.
- Mesa Air, parent of go!, continues to wage the fare war that, according to an email by its former chief financial officer, may have been designed to produce precisely this result.
- Its mainland routes are mostly successful and could be profitable even at current fuel prices with more fuel-efficient jets.
- It has enormous brand loyalty in Hawaii and among Hawaii ex-pats on the mainland. Aloha was founded by ethnic Asians at a time when Hawaiian bumped some people for others, and this led to some family loyalty that exists to this day.
- While others have spoken of the contracting interisland market, the fact remains that there is enough interisland business to support two carriers if, again, the jets are fuel-efficient. Some people just won't fly smaller aircraft between islands and are not lured by go!, Island Air or other players at any price.
- Later in the year it has a suit against Mesa, which already lost an $80 million judgment against Hawaiian. Aloha could use the same evidence Hawaiian found, including the smoking gun email, which, while described at one point as a joke, was backed up by charts and graphs showing how to use Mesa's deeper pockets to muscle Aloha to the sidelines. (The eventual judgement could even be larger than $80 million since the judge refused to award damages for current or future operations, only for demonstrable predatory pricing going back in time.)
- Aloha is second only to Hawaiian as the most on-time airline in the republic, and has the lowest complaint ratio of any airline.
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