I can’t say I’m terribly surprised, but Hawaiian Airlines will be canceling one of its longer domestic flights, as reported by Ishrion Aviation.
Hawaiian Airlines cuts Honolulu to Austin flights as of March 2025
As of March 26, 2025, Hawaiian Airlines will cancel its flight between Honolulu (HNL) and Austin (AUS), which currently operates 2-3x weekly. For context, the flight is operated by an Airbus A330-200 with the following schedule:
HA94 Honolulu to Austin departing 8:50AM arriving 9:15PM
HA93 Austin to Honolulu departing 9:15AM arriving 1:05PM
The 3,763-mile flight operates eastbound on Sundays and Thursdays with a block time of 7hr25min, and operates westbound on Mondays and Fridays with a block time of 8hr50min.
This route was announced in late 2020 and was launched in March 2021, during the peak of the pandemic. Around the same time, the airline also launched a route to Orlando, which ended up being cut in 2022. So at least the Austin route lasted for four years.
It’s not a surprise to see the Austin route cut
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Hawaiian Airlines is cutting Austin service. The route made sense during the peak of the pandemic, when Hawaiian had limited places it could fly its wide body jets, given that so many places in the South Pacific were closed to visitors (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, etc.).
So flying an A330 to Austin (with pretty bad aircraft utilization to boot) was better than just parking it, but that’s about all that can be said. Of course things have evolved quite a bit since then. While flying across the Pacific profitably can still be challenging, every country has reopened to visitors, and demand has been increasing, slowly but steadily.
But arguably what really “killed” this route is Alaska’s takeover of Hawaiian. Alaska Air Group is now able to do its route and fleet planning more centrally, and presumably the airline group has decided that there are more profitable places it can send these wide body jets. That could be in Asia or the South Pacific (with increased feed from Alaska via Honolulu), or it could even be between Honolulu and Alaska hubs in the mainland.
While Alaska Air Group is committed to maintaining a hub in Honolulu, I have to imagine that at some point we’ll see some wide body jets stationed in Seattle. I don’t think it will happen soon, but I’d be shocked if Hawaiian’s 787s don’t eventually fly out of the Pacific Northwest.
I’m sure the Austin route would have survived if it could be operated by a narrow body jet with better economics, but it just doesn’t make much sense with wide body aircraft.
Bottom line
Hawaiian Airlines will discontinue its Honolulu to Austin route as of late March 2025. The route was first launched in early 2021, so it will have operated for around four years. The route made sense when it started, but with the evolution of demand, plus Alaska’s takeover of Hawaiian, this route was bound to be cut sooner rather than later.
What do you make of Hawaiian cutting Austin flights?
