Dogfight Over Hawaii

To the Civil Aeronautics Board last week, the actions of Hawaiian Airlines were little short of outrageous. The CAB flatly accused the airline of using its Government subsidy money to try to throttle competition from smaller Trans-Pacific Airlines in the rich short-haul market around the Hawaiian Islands. To call a halt, the board overruled the recommendation of its examiner and cut back H.A.L.'s requested $1,300,000 mail pay for 1955 by 85%, leaving only $187,000.

On the face of it, CAB's anger seemed justified; the airline situation in Hawaii is indeed in a mess. But it was CAB itself that had started the fight between the airlines, and it had already cost the U.S. $3,280,000 in subsidies.

Until 1949, Hawaiian Airlines was Hawaii's only scheduled interisland airline, and it had made money for six years without a Government subsidy. Starting in 1929 with two eight-passenger Sikorsky Amphibians, it had added a fleet of 13 dependable, twin-engined DC-35, carried 304,000 passengers annually (without a fatality). H.A.L. passengers had some gripes; they wanted to smoke aloft, complained of too few ticket offices, and charged that H.A.L. discriminated against Asians. In 1949 CAB decided that H.A.L.

needed competition, certified nonscheduled Trans-Pacific Airlines for full-scale service with five DC-35 along H.A.L.'s routes. With that, the dogfight was on.

Hawaiian Airlines insisted that discrimination against Asians was entirely a wartime, military measure. To get the technological jump on Trans-Pacific it replaced four of its old DC-35 with five new, 284-m.p.h., 44-passenger Convairs, costing upwards of $600,000 apiece. Trans-Pacific counterattacked by having its hostesses do hula dances aloft, set up a charge-account service, pioneered cut-rate family fares.

Though they boosted inter-island traffic, both T.P.A. and once-profitable H.A.L. found that they could continue operations only by getting subsidies.

In its decision last week, CAB thought that one answer would be for Hawaiian Airlines to get rid of its expensive new Convairs. But H.A.L. has flatly refused to do so, said the planes will eventually be cheaper to operate. Says H.A.L. President Arthur D. Lewis: "There is no more reason for continuing to fly obsolete equipment in Hawaii than anywhere else in the United States."

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