After declaring bankruptcy a couple weeks back and 61 years of operations, Aloha Airlines is ceasing passenger service, with their final flights operating tomorrow, March 31, 2008.
It is indeed sad to see this happen for a few reasons. First, most other American carriers have managed to continue operations through their bankruptcies, most recently Delta and Northwest did it. Second, they are shutting down because they had to compete for too long with go!, a Mesa subsidiary that was dumping fares on the market below costs and losing buckets of money as well. Apparently they were more diversified and able to support the losses better. No word yet as to whether they’ve raised their prices now that the competition is reduced. Oh, and go! was also found guilty (though it is appealing the verdict) of using proprietary insider information that it gathered while considering an investment in Aloha to enter the Hawaiian market and drive them out of business. Nicely done, fellas.
A sad day for aviation, especially because the failings were brought on in such an underhanded way.
Never miss another post: Sign up for email alerts and get only the content you want direct to your inbox.
One Comment
Comments are closed.