HONOLULU - Aloha Airlines announced it will start service to Las Vegas beginning Feb. 14.
Aloha will fly two daily roundtrips to Las Vegas, one from Honolulu and one from Maui. Both flights will make stops in Oakland, Calif., a destination Aloha began service to earlier this year, before a late-night arrival in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is the top travel destination for Hawaii residents, with about 40,000 people a month traveling from the islands to the gambling mecca, Aloha President Glenn Zander said Thursday.
The new routes will give people from Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area more options in traveling to Las Vegas, he said.
''There are a big number of people who like to go and have their holiday in Las Vegas and this gives them a very convenient way to do this,'' Zander said.
The late-arriving time for the Las Vegas flights won't detract from people using them, as many other late-night flights into Las Vegas are popular, Zander said. Aloha also will have the first flight out each day from Las Vegas to San Francisco, and that should make it popular with business people and other travelers.
To promote its new flights, Aloha is offering $99 roundtrips for AlohaPass frequent flier customers who fly three interisland roundtrips from Oct. 10 to Dec. 20.
''People do quite well with flights going in there at that time of night, after midnight, because of the nature of that market, so we think we will be able to have a good load factor at that time,'' Zander said.
Aloha said its Oakland flights became profitable in their second month of operation, and Zander is hopeful the Las Vegas route also will become profitable shortly after it starts service. The Oakland flights have been running with load factors of 70 percent to 85 percent, depending on the time of year.
Aloha is continuing with plans to add service to a suburban Southern California airport, and expects to make that announcement by year's end.
''We are examining all secondary airports in the area - John Wayne, Long Beach, Burbank, Ontario - but we have not yet decided which one,'' Zander said. ''Hopefully we will have a decision by the end of the year.''
The airline also says it will add a new Pacific island destination by next summer.
Aloha offers more than 1,200 interisland flights each week, along with service to Johnston, Midway, Christmas and the Marshall islands.
