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Who would have thought that the collapse of Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines would be the least of our problems?
There was the feel of cataclysm about the permanent shutdown of Aloha passenger service and the complete shutdown of ATA in a period of just 48 hours. All those seats! Gone!
But tourism depends, not just on seats, but on price. All the seats in the world don't bring you visitors if they can't afford the tickets.
In the days after the Aloha and ATA collapses, I stressed the biggest problem was not replacing seats in general, but replacing the cheap seats ATA represented. Now it is apparent that those cheap seats will not be replaced by any carrier. Airline jet fuel bills preclude it.
On Monday, Delta Air Lines hiked its fares to Hawaii by more than $50. On Tuesday those increases were matched by United Airlines. Delta flies to Hawaii from LAX, Salt Lake City and Atlanta; UAL flies here from LAX, SFO, Denver and Chicago (as well as from Japan).
This isn't the end of it, folks. In the first quarter Continental lost $80 million, American $300 million, United $500 million, Northwest $4 billion and Delta $6 billion. They all blamed the jet fuel bill, which for all five legacy carriers now exceeds payroll.
Most of them say fuel now costs so much that they will park dozens of jetliners and simply scale back their domestic schedules. Even if they keep their Hawaii routes, connections could become more of a hassle, and there is no question fares will keep rising. Companies cannot lose millions of dollars a week, as Continental does, or millions an hour, as Delta does, and survive.
At this point the biggest threat to Hawaii tourism is not a shortage of seats, it is the increasing probability that we are nearing the point where the prospective Hawaii vacationer says, "Screw it, let's drive to Yellowstone."
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