Aloha to offer Honolulu flights

Friday, June 18, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.

Aloha Airlines will offer daily nonstop round-trip flights between Las Vegas McCarran International Airport and Honolulu beginning in September.

The Honolulu-based airline will discontinue flights between Las Vegas and Burbank and Oakland, Calif., to add the Honolulu service. The Burbank and Oakland flights were part of Aloha's one-stop service to the Hawaiian Islands to and from Las Vegas.

Aloha, which will use long-range twin-engine Boeing 737 jets on the route, will compete with Hawaiian Airlines, which also offers daily nonstop flights to and from Honolulu International Airport.

Glenn Zander, Aloha's president and chief executive, said the airline was able to gauge demand for service between Las Vegas and Honolulu with the one-stop service and determined that there was enough to warrant the nonstop flights beginning Sept. 7.

Earlier this week, privately held Aloha announced a net loss of $7.2 million in the first three months of 2004 in filing with the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That compared with a loss of $12.9 million for the first quarter of 2003. Aloha, which competes with Hawaiian Airlines on interisland hops and flights to several West Coast destinations, reported first-quarter revenue of $106 million, up 12 percent over the same period a year ago.

Separately, suburban Atlanta-based TransMeridian Airlines, a public charter service, announced that it would discontinue its nonstop round-trip flights between Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, N.Y., and Las Vegas on July 8.

TransMeridian, which began flying the Las Vegas route in August, decided to abandon it when demand did not meet projections.