These Hawaii Flights May Soon Lose All Competition

In spite of prior Southwest Hawaii flight reductions, the behemoth airline’s lowest-performing routes in the entire country aren’t obscure mainland links or long-haul experiments. They’re right here in Hawaii.

According to an analysis of Cirium and U.S. DOT data reported on Simple Flying, the bottom four Southwest routes by load factor are all right here. Kahului to Lihue barely filled 32% of seats. Honolulu to Kahului, normally one of the busiest corridors in the state and among top performers in the nation, was under 40%.

And yet, most of those Southwest flights are still flying. Why?

For travelers, the answer may be less about the price of a ticket and more about how long this experiment can last—and what happens if it ends.

That’s especially true here in Hawaii, where the memory of single-carrier, Hawaiian Airlines dominance is still fresh. Many residents remember what it felt like when that one carrier controlled the interisland market, before Southwest arrived, and what happened to fares, flexibility, and service. There’s a real fear that those days are about to return without competition.

These interisland flights were never built to win.

Southwest doesn’t base any aircraft in Hawaii. It runs a one-plane Hawaii-based buffer for contingencies, rotates jets in from the mainland, and treats interisland flying as a way to show face rather than a profit center. That strategy, which was clear when we met with their team in Honolulu a few months ago, helps explain the head-scratching math.

Even when flights lose money, they may still serve a purpose: reinforcing presence, giving through-passengers more options, and making a broader point about competition.

But it could be wearing thin. Despite heavy discounting, Southwest’s loads are dramatically below Hawaiian’s, reportedly filling about three-quarters of its interisland seats in the same period.

Some of Southwest’s routes have already been trimmed. Others, like Kahului to Kona and Honolulu to Lihue, now limp along with fewer daily frequencies and minimal fanfare.

What’s also telling is that Alaska Airlines, which has flown to Hawaii with great success for nearly two decades, never chose to run interisland flights as extensions of its mainland service, even though it could have done the same thing that Southwest does.

Instead, Alaska stuck to what it does best: flying directly to Hawaii from the West Coast with no illusions about dominating neighbor island routes. And despite being a far smaller company than Southwest, it’s now arguably outmaneuvering Southwest in the market operationally and strategically.

The impact on Hawaii travel could be far from subtle.

For now, Southwest’s bargain interisland fares—sometimes even today under $40—still help suppress prices across the board, causing Hawaiian to match those too low to maintain prices.

Southwest continues to give residents and visitors a way to avoid the infamous $150-per-leg pricing that will otherwise prevail. But if these Southwest flights disappear, there may be no substitute waiting.

With Alaska poised to absorb Hawaiian in the months ahead fully, a single airline may soon control every meaningful route within Hawaii. If Southwest exits the scene, there’s nothing in the pipeline to either replace them or protect Hawaii travelers, and a return to high fares and fewer options seems almost inevitable.

We’ve seen this playbook before—just not like this.

In some ways, Southwest’s strategy echoes Alaska’s Hawaii playbook from years ago. Alaska, too, built a Hawaii-focused network using only 737s, flying from West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and San Jose.

They didn’t touch Las Vegas or Phoenix the way Southwest does. Still, they made up for it with depth, frequency, reliability, and a strong loyalty program that lured California flyers away from the same Hawaiian they recently purchased.

Back then, Hawaiian was too slow to counter. Their widebody-heavy fleet wasn’t well suited for the smaller-capacity, higher-frequency routes Alaska used to poach market share rapidly. By the time Hawaiian finally brought in the A321neo fleet in 2018, much of the damage had already been done. Alaska had built a base of loyal Hawaii-bound customers who saw no reason to look back.

Fast-forward to now, and the pattern is different—but the results may be the same. Southwest’s Hawaii plan may never have involved building deep loyalty. But it was clearly about undercutting Hawaiian’s hold on the market just enough to destabilize it.

And it did just that, helping bring Hawaiian to its knees at the verge of bankruptcy and directly into Alaska’s waiting arms. And while Southwest remains dominant in California with enormous loyalty and brand power, that hasn’t translated into a sustainable Hawaii strategy. It may have shaken things up, but not in a working way.

Could this be Southwest’s exit ramp?

When we spoke to Southwest execs earlier this year, they didn’t seem worried about the low loads. These flights were described as “incremental,” supported by a network model that doesn’t rely on Hawaii interisland profitability.

But with continued cutbacks—including reduced interisland frequencies, the end of service on some underperforming mainland routes, and a broader reduction in Hawaii capacity year-over-year—weak demand, and other carriers openly questioning their own Hawaii strategy, the writing is on the wall.

If Southwest quietly withdraws from interisland routes or exits more mainland to Hawaii flying, it wouldn’t come with a dramatic press release. The changes would be phased in, masked by “seasonal adjustments” or “fleet optimization.” And it would leave one carrier—Alaska, via Hawaiian—with little to no meaningful competition on many routes.

What Hawaii Flights Cost Without Competition.

If Southwest pulls back further, there’s little question what happens next. Hawaiian, under Alaska leadership, will raise fares. And honestly, they probably have to.

Interisland flights are expensive to operate. Short hops, frequent cycles, and high airport costs make them some of the least efficient flights in the system. That’s why we’ve said that $39 fares were unsustainable for years. Realistic pricing is closer to $125–$150 each way—painful for residents, but necessary for reasonable profitability.

In addition, Alaska acquired a quarter-century-old fleet of interisland planes that could soon face costly replacements.

These shifts won’t happen overnight, but Alaska’s leadership has seemed very clear about not running money-losing routes just to maintain market share. Once the Alaska–Hawaiian integration is complete, there will be no incentive to keep prices artificially low if no one else is competing.

Why Southwest’s Global Hopes Don’t Include Hawaii.

Southwest has long teased that new international partners might emerge, and in fact, that was the case with Icelandair. Is there a potential for linking their Hawaii network with broader Pacific destinations in the same way? We caught wind of this possibility earlier this year and hinted that a surprise might still come. But nothing has materialized, and it’s hard to see how that would work at this point.

Southwest is a poor fit for those types of partnerships because it lacks a strong Hawaii base. It doesn’t offer onward Pacific service, doesn’t maintain a local hub, and hasn’t built the kind of elite traveler base that typically supports such cross-border routes.

For now, enjoy the bargain while it lasts.

If you’re booking interisland travel this summer or fall, you may still find those ultra-low Southwest-driven fares on both Southwest and Hawaiian. And for many travelers, that’s reason enough to book.

But don’t expect them to last.

Airline economics rarely tolerate irrationality for long, and Southwest has far more pressing concerns on the mainland. If more of their Hawaii flights disappear, they likely won’t be coming back. And if that happens, the new price floor may be far higher than most visitors—and many residents—have seen in years.

They may look like empty flights. But they could be the start of something much bigger.