new allegiant air honolulu flights

Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air is delaying its honolulu flights by a year.

Alaska Airlines recently announced they will be starting service from Bellingham (located about 1.5hrs north of Seattle right by the Canadian border) to Honolulu starting January 7th.

The carrier, which plans to fly from small cities that don't offer direct flights to the islands, said at a company investors presentation that regulatory issues have delayed the planned start of service to Hawaii until 2012.

"We felt it was better to break the process down into bite-size chunks rather than swallow the elephant whole at one time," he said. "We talked to some carriers and were told that getting ETOPS authority (certification to fly over water) is a tough process, it's time-consuming and it takes a lot of resources. We want that to be our full focus when we go into it."

In addition to getting ETOPS authority, Allegiant needs to get its newly acquired Boeing 757s on its operating certificate and get "flag status" that will allow Allegiant to fly routes beyond the 48 contiguous states, such as to Hawaii.

Gallagher said Allegiant already has the first two 757s in its fleet, plans to acquire two more over the next two months and expects to obtain the remaining two 757s in November 2011. He said the company will amend its Hawaii plans and familiarize itself with the 757s by using the two it currently has for Las Vegas routes.

"We'll focus on running the airplane in and out of Las Vegas," Gallagher said. "We want to learn how to run it. We want to learn corporate experiences. We want to understand our maintenance aspects -- anything that has to do with the safe operation. We'll create revenue. It's not Hawaii, but it's the same as Hawaii in the sense that what we'll do here is sell packages, bring passengers out here on a vacation-oriented thing."