Beat of Hawaii and Beyond: Travel Deals, Tips, Events, Culture

If you want to come home from your Hawaii vacation with more than a tan, here’s a new offer from Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) for the discriminating voyager.

Starting this fall, you’ll be able for the first time to get medically supervised Botox, Restylane and Perlane treatments at sea here in Hawaii. In an industry first, NCL is adding their Mandara medi-spas on every ship. This includes their Pride of America which has weekly 7-night cruises of the Hawaiian Islands.

The medi-spa compliments NCL’s regular menu of treatments that include:

• Spa services for skin, body, hair, nail and massage.
• Teeth whitening, micro dermabrasion and cellulite reduction.

All of the medical treatments are supervised by Dr. Brad Herman, a Miami-based, board-certified plastic surgeon and his specially trained team of licensed doctors.

NCL president and CEO, Colin Veitch, had this to say:

“Our spas are the best at sea and we are continually looking for ways to enhance the guest experience on board our ships. By being the first to offer these popular medi-spa treatments, we are furthering the tradition of NCL-led innovation in the cruise industry.”

Reviews of NCL’s traditional spa treatments are mixed, and the services are not cheap.

When your friends comment on your new look, just tell them that you owe it all to our island paradise. Either no one, or only your shipboard friends, will know for sure.

Hawaiian Airlines asked last week for airport slots at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport (SNA). SNA lost popular service to the Islands when Aloha went out of business in April.

The significance of this announcement goes beyond Orange County.  Hawaiian Airlines will be adding a new aircraft type to their Trans-Pacific fleet in order to serve additional regional airports, possibly including Kauai. These new planes will be, by necessity, either 757 or 737.

Stay tuned for more updates on this Hawaiian Airlines development.

The 400 pilots of Hawaiian Airlines are losing patience following a year of informal attempts to reach a new contract. This situation could deteriorate rapidly and pose serious risk to the health of Hawaii’s largest, locally-based airline. The announcement comes at a time when Hawaiian Airlines can least afford any interruption in service.

In Sunday’s press release, likely intended to bring light to the severity of the situation and gain public support, Capt. Eric Sampson, chairman of the Hawaiian Airlines’ pilot association had this to say:

“We’re frustrated and disappointed with the slow pace of negotiations. This is a billion-dollar airline with huge upside potential, and management’s latest proposal isn’t even enough to cover annual cost of living increases.”

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) indicated that they have made considerable concessions to Hawaiian Airlines over the past one and a half years. These include having non-Hawaiian pilots fly planes to New Zealand for heavy maintenance, facilitating Hawaiian’s recent Airbus fleet acquisition, and relaxing agreed-upon contract terms to allow longer pilot flying time.

ALPA will now need to decide whether to continue to cooperate with Hawaiian or play a more adversarial role.

In addition to the pilots, several other Hawaiian unions have contracts that will soon be coming up for negotiation.

History: Hawaiian Airlines has faced labor disputes before and dissension between the company and their pilots is historic. In 2006, Hawaiian narrowly averted a strike by machinists over outsourcing of maintenance.

Suggestion: Consider trip insurance with coverage for labor disputes if you are flying Hawaiian. If you have already purchased tickets, you can still buy trip insurance with such a clause within 14 days as a general rule.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article on airline fuel consumption and what it costs per person to fly between New York and Los Angeles.

Given that we’re talking approximately the same distance to Hawaii from Los Angeles (2,550 miles), I thought I’d take a stab at some estimates.

Here’s what I’ve pulled together from a variety of sources, including Boeing data.

Based on $135/barrel oil ($4/gallon jet fuel) and 80% of seats occupied, my estimated fuel cost per passenger round-trip from LA to Honolulu:

Boeing 767: $332

Boeing 757: $280

Boeing 737: $254

The bad news for Hawaiian Airlines: their all 767 Trans-Pacifc fleet is hurting them competitively. On the other hand, those using 737’s, like Alaska and Continental, are faring best on fuel costs.

The airlines are not cutting seats to every destination.  In fact, in a not altogether surprising move, Pacific Business News just announced that United Airlines will be adding 10 daily flights this summer from the U.S. mainland to Hawaii.

Starting on June 15 United will add:

• Three flights to Honolulu, Oahu
• Four flights to Kahalui, Maui
• Two flights to Lihue, Kauai
• One flight to Kona, Hawaii

We’ll update our information as soon as more details are available.  Right now we still haven’t seen where these flights will be originating or the types of aircraft.  Stay tuned for news on the possible beneficial impact on Hawaii summer airfares.

We continue to believe that United stands poised to move into Hawaii in a much bigger way in the event of Go!’s demise.

In light of deteriorating predictability of fuel costs, I think the airlines may soon move to a completely new way of separating fuel charges from ticket prices.

Here’s what I predict: A non-refundable fuel charge calculation based on today’s cost of oil, times the actual number of miles flown.  

Something like this:

Airfare roundtrip LAX-HNL: $400.00

Taxes and fees 25.00

Fuel charge (2,550 miles x today’s rate): 375.00

Total: $800.00

Can this help the consumer’s view of the airlines? I definitely think so.

This may also be the only way for the airlines to charge fairly for tickets in light of oil prices, while being able to maintain the more traditional basic airfare component pricing.

It may also be a way to return to relative airfare price stability, plus stop the insanity of irrational component charges for baggage, seat assignments, lavatory usage and more.

What do you think?