Mokulele adding planes to aid scheduling for Lanai and Molokai

Southern Airways, the parent company of Mokulele Airlines, announced Monday that it will deploy $10 million in additional aircraft to Molokai and Lanai.

The airline has secured a third 28-seat Saab 340 aircraft to begin servicing Molokai and Lanai this summer. In the coming weeks, Mokulele plans to relocate three new nine-seat Tecnam Travellers from its current fleet on Guam to Hawaii to back up its Cessna Grand Caravans, which are rotating through heavy inspections and fleet refurbishment.

Mokulele also is withdrawing a daily flight from Kapalua, Hilo and Kona beginning in April to reassign those aircraft and crews when needed to Molokai and Lanai.

Keith Sisson, chief of staff of Mokulele Airlines, said in an email, “This is the largest investment that we have made (in Hawaii) during any one particular time frame. The purpose of this investment is to plan for the future needs of these markets and for us to be ready should demand increase.”

The new investment comes as Mokulele has been grappling with “horrific weather,” which Sisson said resulted in cancellations and delays over eight of the first 15 days of March. Also, last week, both of Mokulele’s Saab aircraft were unavailable — one was damaged by a piece of ground service equipment while the other was undergoing a five-year inspection.

Those issues were on top of a massive schedule change this month that added 12.5% more seats between Honolulu and Molokai due to the arrival of Moku­lele’s second Saab. Its first Saab, the largest plane it flies, arrived last summer to supplement its turboprop aircraft during peak demand times.

The Saab-related schedule change resulted in some passengers having to be rescheduled from an old flight that was no longer operating to one of the new flights that was created. Increased demand from spring break didn’t help. That left some passengers reporting issues ranging from long waits to cancellations to problems getting re-booked, even getting stranded.

“With the very rare exceptions, nobody was stranded, we were able to get everyone moved,” Sisson said, adding that the airline added additional flights onto its Cessna Grand Caravan.

Mokulele Airlines in 2021 became the only airline with commercially scheduled flights to both Molokai and Lanai. The third Saab aircraft is intended to supplement Mokulele’s schedule during peak times and serve as a spare in the event of aircraft unavailability.

The carrier said it expects to return its Saab 340 aircraft to service this week, which will help scheduling challenges subside.

“Between the weather and the limited availability of our Saab fleet over the last week, this month has not at all been what we expected,” Sisson said. “The flight disruptions of the last month were isolated and should drastically improve over the next day or two. People will start to see more available seats later this week when the operation normalizes.”