Hawaiian Airlines Tried to Walk This Back: It Just Didn’t Work

A single line, buried near the end of an internal Hawaiian Airlines memo, did more damage than pages of follow-up clarification could ever achieve. It landed harder than expected, even for people who thought they were already braced for what integration would bring next. The memo announced routine updates to the airline’s “People Policies,” its employee handbook.

The final key point stated that Hawaiian words had been removed in order to make the language “inclusive for our entire employee population across the entire U.S.”

While the memo was generated by Hawaiian Airlines, the decision came from Alaska Airlines, the new owners. That’s important, even if the coverage missed it.

For many who read it, the meaning of that was unmistakable. Something fundamental had shifted, whether the company intended it or not. The reaction came fast. Employees, longtime observers, and Hawaii residents read the line less as HR cleanup and more as a signal about direction and priorities.

Within hours, the memo was circulating well beyond the company, along with anger and disbelief. Not long after, Hawaiian Airlines issued a clarification saying the memo was poorly worded and that Hawaiian language remains part of the airline’s brand promise.

Officially, nothing changed. But the unease wouldn’t go away. The problem wasn’t just the memo itself. It was the walk-back that followed, and what that walk-back seemed to confirm.

One sentence struck a nerve.

To understand why this one sentence in an employee handbook was upsetting, you have to understand Hawaii’s history with its own language. Hawaiian was banned in schools in 1896 following the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and that ban remained in place for nearly a century, until 1987.

The revival of “Olelo Hawaii” since then has been hard-won and deliberate. Hawaiian is one of the state’s two official languages, yet its place in daily life is still fragile.

For decades, Hawaiian Airlines stood out as one of the few large employers that didn’t treat Hawaiian language as ceremonial or decorative. It was normalized and showed up in communications, values statements, and everyday usage, not as branding flair but as a working language within the company. Not only that, but the passenger greetings on Hawaiian Airlines flights are both in Hawaiian and in English.

For many employees, that has been important. It was part of the airline’s core internal identity, not just something rolled out for passengers or marketing.

That helps explain why the memo hit so hard. Language in policy documents defines what’s official, what’s optional, and how it all fits together. When a company says it has been removed in the name of inclusivity, people ask who is being included and who is being asked to step aside.

The correction simply didn’t settle things.

After the backlash, Hawaiian Airlines said the memo was incorrectly worded. The company emphasized that the Hawaiian language remains part of its brand through values such as Malama, Hookipa, and Po`okela. In short, Hawaiian words were not being removed after all.

On paper, even we thought that would have ended it. In the online reality, however, it didn’t. The clarification addressed phrasing, but it never answered the deeper questions the memo raised.

If nothing changed, why did the memo say what it did? If the Hawaiian language remains fully embedded, what exactly was meant to be removed? And why was inclusivity framed in a way that positioned Hawaiian language as something that needed to be stripped out in order to achieve it.

The gap is where commenters’ discomfort continued, even after the wording in the handbook got fixed.

This was not just an HR misstep.

Some argued that employee handbooks are just legal documents and that this episode has little to do with the airline customer experience. That framing misses the point. The handbook change itself wasn’t the story.

By the time the memo appeared, readers and employees already sensed Hawaiian Airlines was being pulled toward systemwide uniformity. But the language change didn’t help.

The episode seemed to many to imply that Hawaiian’s identity was no longer a given. Instead, it had to be justified, negotiated, and potentially even set aside, which isn’t how the partnership was first described.

That is why this didn’t get brushed off as a wording error by Hawaiian employees and others. It brought something into the open that had stayed unspoken since the Alaska acquisition.

Where decisions are made.

While the memo carried Hawaiian branding, the decisions come from Alaska Airlines, which now controls policy, systems, and messaging.

CEO Diana Birkett Rakow joined from Alaska’s corporate affairs team just months ago and has repeatedly said Hawaiian’s identity is secure. “Hawaiian Airlines is here to stay. Pualani is here to stay,” she said recently.

But her predecessor, Joe Sprague, told Beat of Hawaii directly that the Hawaiian Airlines CEO role was interim by design—never intended to be permanent and always meant to end once full integration into Alaska Air Group was complete. Whether that structure has since changed hasn’t been addressed publicly.

Reassurances are coming from a role originally described as transitional, not from a long-term steward of a distinct airline identity. Readers appear to be picking up on the difference.

Hawaiian Air loyalists felt a disconnect.

What made Hawaiian Airlines feel different was never just the logo on the tail or the word aloha in a safety video. For employees, it was the ability to show up without cultural translation. For travelers, it was an experience that didn’t quite feel like any other U.S. airline.

The memo cut against that understanding. It didn’t erase it outright, while it made it feel less settled. Less of an assumption. And for many, that was the uncomfortable part.

This didn’t have to happen.

Other airlines with strong regional or indigenous identities have also made cultural choices. Airlines such as Air New Zealand and Air Canada include native and regional languages in their official documents and internal communications, even while they operate large multinational workforces.

Why the walk-back couldn’t undo the damage.

The company says the Hawaiian language remains part of the brand. That may be true in marketing materials and values statements. But trust doesn’t come from polished statements as much as it does from unguarded moments. The original memo was just that.

It showed how someone, somewhere in the organization, framed the Hawaiian language as something that should be removed to make everyone comfortable. That didn’t come out of thin air. And, once it was out there, a correction was never going to be enough. It was too late.

This episode will fade from the many headlines, but it won’t fade from memory. Future integration moves will now be read through this lens, with less attention on policy specifics and more on what they reveal.

Hawaiian Airlines says nothing fundamental has changed. Many people don’t quite believe that is true, given the huge response online.

Does this feel like another step away from what made Hawaiian Airlines unique? Or is this just being overblown? What would it take for you to feel confident that the airline’s identity is truly being preserved, or do you even care anymore?