News broke earlier this afternoon and word spread fast throughout the state, especially in the web community about the Aloha Airlines closing. I first found out about it through one of my twitter friends and confirmation came after a quick check to the Honolulu Advertiser website.
Honestly, I was almost counting on someone to come in and save the day for Aloha. Someone to come buy them and keep this icon of island travel in business. No happy endings for the time being because now 1900 full and part time employees and a total work force of over 3,000 will be out of work.
Vanessa just flew to Honolulu and back Friday on Aloha. She flew on the vintage Aloha jet, the one that had the colors and emblem from the old days, similar to the one in the picture above. Vanessa had mentioned that the employees seemed a bit subdued, she guessed because of the events of late. But did we actually think Aloha would shut down? Not really.
We're also wondering how this'll affect Merrie Monarch, which starts today. Although Hawaiian Airlines is an official MM sponsor, one has to wonder how many people this will affect. Many, I'm sure. Certainly gonna affect things here in our state.
Strangely enough, we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of the fateful Aloha Airlines flight 243, the one that suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, but was able to land safely on Maui. I believe that may have been the first (of several) accidents that exposed the problem of metal fatigue in aging airliners. In fact, Congress passed the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988 in the wake of the disaster. This provided for stricter research into probable causes of future airplane disasters.
Source: By Darrin's Blog
