Last updated on August 18th, 2024 at 09:10 pm
The islands of Lana’i and Moloka’i are dependent on a singular airline for vital transportation the larger islands of O’ahu and Maui for doctor appointments, shopping, visiting family, etc. However, Mokulele fails Hawai’i again, as it continues to struggle with maintenance.
As I’ve covered several times already, Mokulele provides a literal lifeline to the islands of Lana’i and Moloka’i, both of which lack many necessary medical services and even shopping needs. However, in the past several years, they haven’t been able to reliably provide these crucial links between the islands. Recently, they promised things would change, and things did get a little better for a brief period of time. Unfortunately, Mokulele fails Hawai’i again with a new slew of maintenance challenges.
Mokulele Fails Hawai’i Again
On Saturday, August 17, 2024, Mokulele fails Hawai’i again as it was forced to withdraw an undisclosed portion of its fleet from service. Actually, it seems as if its larger Saab 340s were already out of service because they need and weren’t able to obtain a spare General Electric CT7-9B turboprop engine. The inability to use this aircraft was already causing disruptions to Mokulele’s schedule. So, any further disruption was not something the airline could handle. But, of course, additional issues did pop up.
So, what happened this time? Apparently, during routine maintenance, the airline found potential discrepancies in the documentation related to the landing gear on a particular Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. This triggered an emergency review of an undisclosed number of other Grand Caravans in their fleet, forcing the airline to slash capacity and flights beginning on Saturday. They say they anticipate completing these inspection on Wednesday, August 21.
Finding information on their operations is difficult. Apparently, the airline isn’t communicating with passengers as to whether their flights are still being operated or not, and FlightAware is showing that just 10% of their flights didn’t operate on Saturday or Sunday. However, the Hawai’i Department of Transportation stated that they anticipated “at least three” of Mokulele’s flights would operate on Sunday. However, one news outlet reported that only half of flights operated on Saturday.
Moreover, state officials are asking other operators to step in, including TransAir and Kamaka Air, neither of which operate regularly scheduled passenger flights. Both are primarily cargo airlines, so I’m not quite sure how they’d help. However, Kamaka Air operates six Cessna 208B Grand Caravans and one new Cessna SkyCourrier, while TransAir operates a fleet of six Short 360s. Perhaps Lana’i Air could help, as they operate passenger-configured SkyCourriers and Pilatus PC-12s.
Final Thoughts
It’s embarrassing that Mokulele fails Hawai’i again, especially since it seems that things have worsened since Southern Airways Express took over the airline. That’s ironic, as Southern is a larger airline, which also operates a similar fleet.Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like things will change for the better any time soon. The market for flights to Lana’i and Moloka’i are so small, that it’s even more difficult to sustain one airline on these routes than the others. This is made evident by the numerous airlines that have tried and failed, including long-time staple Island Air, and, more recently, Hawaiian’s own commuter subsidiary, Ohana.
The difficulty in operating these routes isn’t an excuse for the dismal service standards provided by Mokulele. The routes qualify for Essential Air Service grants, which are supposed to help subsidize their operations. That begs the question, then, are there certain standards that airlines must adhere to? If so, why the heck isn’t Mokulele being held to them? And if there aren’t any, perhaps there should be? This situation cannot keep happening.