Go! Airlines reports poor October results, falling traffic & load factor

October was yet another great month for Hawaiian Airlines, the only true inter-Hawaiian airline with a traffic increase of 8.3% year over year.  The airlines load factor also rose 2.4 percentage points to a great 85.3%. 

But while Hawaiian was enjoying another month of recovery and great results, their only inter-island competitor now, Go!, a subsidiary of Mesa Airlines, saw a 13.6% decline in passenger traffic for the same month.  Mesa of course blamed the slide on a reduction of tourism to Hawaii and the global economic condition.  But if that is the case, shouldn’t Hawaiian have also suffered a decrease?  Maybe there is an obvious dislike of Go! in Hawaii since they arrogantly and unethically pushed out long-Hawaiian carrier Aloha.

Go! posted a 64.9% load factor – almost 20 percentage points below Hawaiian which is amazing since Go! only has to fill small regional jets, and Hawaiian fills larger mainline, more comfortable jets.  We will wait to see if Mesa puts some of the 20 plus jets United just cancelled with Hawaii service to boost operations.