This is the latest episode of “unplanned extended Hawaii flight layovers.” It was brought to you by Hawaiian Airlines and a particularly problematic baggage belt loader that collided with the aircraft. Passengers bound from Las Vegas to Honolulu found themselves stuck in a tale of long delays, cancellations, and the decidedly not glamorous side of travel chaos.
An incident occurred last week at Harry Reid International Airport, wherein a Hawaiian A330 plane was struck by a baggage belt loader. Passengers were left beyond frustrated when Hawaiian Airlines may have missed the mark by first offering minimal food vouchers. Then there was a severe hotel room merry-go-round reported by passengers. First, there were not enough hotel rooms, and second, passengers were checked out of hotels on Friday for a flight that didn’t occur until Saturday.
This incident occurred on HA 5, which was bound from Las Vegas to Honolulu on Wednesday. According to multiple reports including Hawaii News Now and Simple Flying, a series of cascading events occurred following the incident, which included the need to inspect the aircraft and, by the time that was complete, resulted in a time-out of crew members.
Thus, the flight was first delayed and ultimately canceled for that day. Then again, on Thursday, passengers were informed that the day’s flight was also canceled for unknown reasons. In the end, passengers made it to Hawaii on Saturday, about three days later than they had planned. And the plane that was involved in the incident had to be returned to Honolulu without passengers onboard.
Passengers complained not only about the extended delay but also about the communication and compensation that was provided.
Remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and in this case, that also includes passengers.
Alaskan Airlines does not have aloha and uses all Boeing planes. I will no longer fly Hawaiian and I am from Hawaii.
A future round trip
&food voucher wond help.
Also re-emburstment car/hotel accommodation…
I’m looking into a future trip to LV & hopefully airline has settle its problem….
What you describe happens on all airlines. Indeed I have had it happen to me twice, neither on Hawaiian. It is not like airlines keep extra planes and crew around at all airports. The FAA is very strict on both the airlines and crew if duty time is exceeded.
I’m flying HA to LAS in a week. Hopefully it’ll go smoothly. Does it seem to anyone else that the last couple of years has been just one long stretch of a comedy of errors (bordering on farcical) across every segment of every industry and state government and it seems to be getting worse??? I’ll be back for Christmas and New Years but I’m pulling the plug on my usual late summer trip… Next year I think I’ll try the Cook Islands…
Best Regards
I may be wrong, but there could’ve been other solutions instead of stranding the passengers. Years ago I had to get to Hawai’i for business and the HA flight was indefinitely delayed. I asked the Hawaiian counter clerk to transfer me to any other available flight which they did. I eventually flew with another airline via LAX and got to Hawaii with just a couple of hours delay. Why wouldn’t or couldn’t they do that in this case?
It seems like Alaska has better processes in place so perhaps having them run the behind the scenes will be good for the Hawaiian Airlines brand.
There seems to be a recurring them of Hawaiian’s otherwise stellar staff being perennially unprepared for irregular operations. I don’t know why this keeps happening, whether it’s outsourced handling agents at out stations or just appalling internal communications. It seems to be a problem that continuously happens and then hijacks Hawaiian’s social media posts with never-ending tales of woe. Never a good look. You’d think they’d learn by now.
Hi Guys So in addition to the problems dealing with non affordable vacations in Hawaii, we now hear about all of the plane problems that further convince us to forego Hawaii travel completely.
On April 8th…… My wife & I was booked on Hawaiian Airlines HA 62, departing KOA at 3:25PM for LAX….. in the end the flight departed at 10:15PM because the first plane from the mainland had a problem with the 1st class toilet….. then we had to wait for a back-up plane from HNL and finally we needed a flight crew…… Wow!!!….. LAX at last by 6:00AM……. April 9th……. Leland S
This is another example of the gross lack of transparency that HA has been doing since the disastrous implementation of their new website. There is no one in communications for either the airline or the website to communicate with.
You can always talk to someone at Alaska that can answer your questions. If they can’t then a supervisor is readily available. HA is its own worst enemy.
Thank you for the insight gentleman.