- Proposed merger of Alaska and Hawaiian airlines a promising fit that should improve air travel for residents of each state, observers say Anchorage Daily News
- $1.9 billion airline merger: Alaska airlines announces plans to buy Hawaiian Airlines ABC News
- Hawaiian Holdings: Take The Cash And Run For Now (NASDAQ:HA) Seeking Alpha
- 94 years ago, it launched inter-island air service. For Hawaiian Air, the rest was history Hawaii News Now
- Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines CEOs discuss merger and how they plan to keep separate brands Hawaii News Now
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Tag Archives: Hawaiian
Hawaiian Electric points finger at Maui County over devastating wildfires, stock jumps 40% – CNBC
- Hawaiian Electric points finger at Maui County over devastating wildfires, stock jumps 40% CNBC
- HECO denies claims its power lines started Lahaina fire, insinuates county holds blame Hawaii News Now
- Deadly Maui Wildfires Possibly Caused By Bare Electrical Wire, Leaning Poles HuffPost
- Investigation into cause of Maui wildfire intensifies l GMA Good Morning America
- Shutting off power to reduce wildfire risk on windy days isn’t a simple decision – an energy expert explains the trade-offs electric utilities face The Conversation Indonesia
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A couple on their honeymoon alleges a Hawaiian snorkeling company abandoned them in the ocean. A survival expert says they were lucky to survive. – Yahoo News
- A couple on their honeymoon alleges a Hawaiian snorkeling company abandoned them in the ocean. A survival expert says they were lucky to survive. Yahoo News
- Couple sues Hawaii tour company for allegedly leaving them stranded in the ocean Fox Business
- Hayward couple sues tour boat company that left them stranded in the ocean KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco
- In lawsuit, couple says Hawaii snorkel tour abandoned them at sea The Washington Post
- Honeymooners suing snorkeling company for $5m after they were allegedly abandoned in the ocean and feared they would drown Fortune
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Cloud shot up in front of Hawaiian Airlines plane that hit severe turbulence last month | Air transport
A cloud shot up vertically like a plume of smoke in a matter of seconds before a Hawaiian Airlines flight last month hit severe turbulence and 25 people on board were injured, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The captain of the 18 December flight from Phoenix to Honolulu told investigators that flight conditions had been smooth with clear skies when the cloud shot up in front of the plane and there was no time to change course, the report said.
He called the lead flight attendant and told her there might be turbulence. Within one to three seconds, the plane “encountered severe turbulence”, the report states.
Shortly afterward, the lead flight attendant told the crew there were multiple injuries in the passenger cabin.
Of the 291 passengers and crew on board, 25 were injured, including four passengers and two crew members who were seriously hurt, the report says. The plane sustained minor damage.
Tiffany Reyes, one of the passengers taken to hospitals, said the next day that she had just gotten back to her seat from the bathroom and was about to buckle her seatbelt when the flight dipped.
In an instant, Reyes said she found herself on the aisle floor, staring up at caved-in ceiling panels and a cracked bathroom sign that was hanging.
“I asked everyone around me, ‘Was that me?’” Reyes said. “They said I had apparently flown into the ceiling and slammed into the ground.”
Reyes said she initially thought something had hit the plane and it was crashing, and that they were going to die, because she had never encountered anything so violent on a flight.
“That’s the most terrifying experience I’ve been through in my whole 40 years of life,” Reyes said.
Hawaiian Airlines’ chief operating officer, Jon Snook, said at the time that such turbulence was unusual, noting that the airline had not experienced anything like it in recent history. The fasten-seatbelts sign was on at the time.
Cloud shot up in front of Hawaiian Airlines plane that hit severe turbulence last month | Air transport
A cloud shot up vertically like a plume of smoke in a matter of seconds before a Hawaiian Airlines flight last month hit severe turbulence and 25 people on board were injured, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The captain of the 18 December flight from Phoenix to Honolulu told investigators that flight conditions had been smooth with clear skies when the cloud shot up in front of the plane and there was no time to change course, the report said.
He called the lead flight attendant and told her there might be turbulence. Within one to three seconds, the plane “encountered severe turbulence”, the report states.
Shortly afterward, the lead flight attendant told the crew there were multiple injuries in the passenger cabin.
Of the 291 passengers and crew on board, 25 were injured, including four passengers and two crew members who were seriously hurt, the report says. The plane sustained minor damage.
Tiffany Reyes, one of the passengers taken to hospitals, said the next day that she had just gotten back to her seat from the bathroom and was about to buckle her seatbelt when the flight dipped.
In an instant, Reyes said she found herself on the aisle floor, staring up at caved-in ceiling panels and a cracked bathroom sign that was hanging.
“I asked everyone around me, ‘Was that me?’” Reyes said. “They said I had apparently flown into the ceiling and slammed into the ground.”
Reyes said she initially thought something had hit the plane and it was crashing, and that they were going to die, because she had never encountered anything so violent on a flight.
“That’s the most terrifying experience I’ve been through in my whole 40 years of life,” Reyes said.
Hawaiian Airlines’ chief operating officer, Jon Snook, said at the time that such turbulence was unusual, noting that the airline had not experienced anything like it in recent history. The fasten-seatbelts sign was on at the time.
36 injured during turbulence on Hawaiian Airlines flight
“Medical care was provided to several guests & crewmembers at the airport for minor injuries while some were swiftly transported to local hospitals for further care,” Hawaiian Airlines tweeted.
Passengers suffered injuries including cuts to the head, bruises and loss of consciousness, the emergency medical authorities said. Eleven people were in serious condition and nine others were stable at the hospital. Officials said 13 people were taken to hospitals by ambulance and the rest by city bus, accompanied by paramedics and other medical staff.
(1/2) HA35 from PHX to HNL encountered severe turbulence & landed safely in HNL at 10:50 a.m. today. Medical care was provided to several guests & crewmembers at the airport for minor injuries while some were swiftly transported to local hospitals for further care.
— Hawaiian Airlines (@HawaiianAir) December 19, 2022
The flight was full, with 278 passengers, eight flight attendants and two pilots, Hawaiian Airlines Chief Operating Officer Jon Snook said. The plane was flying at 36,000 feet when it hit the turbulence. He said he did not yet know how much altitude the plane lost and could only speculate at this point about how people were injured.
“Injuries occur because the aircraft goes down and if you don’t have your seat belt on, you stay where you are as the aircraft goes down,” he said during a news conference Sunday afternoon in Hawaii. Three of the people who were taken to the hospital were flight attendants, he said.
Kaylee Reyes, who was a passenger on the flight, told Hawaii News Now that her mother had just sat down and hadn’t yet buckled her seat belt when turbulence hit.
“She flew up and hit the ceiling,” Reyes said.
Another passenger, Jazmin Bitanga, told the news outlet that the plane experienced two “intense” drops. During one, she said, her boyfriend’s metal water bottle flew into the ceiling, cracking it. A photo circulating on social media shows what appears to be a gash and cracks in the plane’s ceiling.
“Just all around me there were people crying,” Bitanga told Hawaii News Now.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the Flight 35 was heading from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport when it reported the turbulence at about 10:35 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time.
The agency said it was investigating.
According to the Associated Press, the National Weather Service in Honolulu said a weather advisory had been issued for thunderstorms Sunday morning in areas that would have included the plane’s flight path.
Snook said during the news conference that such an extreme case of turbulence was “relatively uncommon.”
“We haven’t experienced an incident of this nature in recent history for sure,” he said. He said there wasn’t any warning of the particular patch of air that caused the incident.
He said the seat belt sign was on at the time the plane hit the patch of air, but it wasn’t clear how many people were not buckled.
Snook said there was not a struggle in the cockpit to control the plane.
“These aircraft are designed to deal with this sort of level of turbulence and are designed to recover from it without issue,” he said.
36 injured, 11 seriously, after Hawaiian Airlines flight experiences “severe turbulence,” officials say
A flight from Phoenix to Honolulu left 36 people hurt, with 11 sustaining serious injuries, after the plane experienced “severe turbulence,” officials said Sunday.
A total of 20 people aboard Hawaiian Airlines Flight 35 were taken to two local hospitals, Honolulu Emergency Medical Services confirmed. Nine of those 20 sustained minor injuries with 11 suffering serious injuries, according to EMS.
One person was knocked unconscious, Honolulu Emergency Services Department Director Jim Ireland said at a press conference. About 10 passengers experienced nausea and vomiting, Ireland said. Of the 20 people hospitalized, 17 were passengers and three were crew members, according to the airline. The plane was carrying 278 passengers and 10 crew members — 2 pilots and 8 flight attendants.
The flight landed safely at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport at 10:50 a.m. and medical care was provided at the scene for passengers and crew members who suffered less serious injuries, the airline said.
“We are supporting all affected passengers & employees and are continuing to monitor the situation,” Hawaiian Airlines said in a tweet.
The cause of the turbulence has not been confirmed, although there were reports of thunderstorms in the area. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident.
There have been several instances this year of turbulence on a commercial flight causing injuries.
In July, eight people were hospitalized after an American Airlines flight from Tampa, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee, experienced severe “unexpected turbulence” and was forced to land in Alabama, a spokesperson for Birmingham’s airport told CBS News.
The incident came weeks after three Southwest Airlines flight attendants and one passenger on a flight from Chicago to Salt Lake City suffered minor injuries after their flight experienced “moderate turbulence.”
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20 people injured after severe turbulence on Hawaiian Airlines flight to Honolulu
Twenty people, including three flight attendants, were injured after a Hawaiian Airlines flight en route to Honolulu experienced severe turbulence, in what’s being called a “very rare” event, according to officials.
Hawaiian Airlines Flight 35 was flying from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu when the pilots reported severe turbulence around 10:30 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time on Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The Airbus A330 was about 30 minutes outside of Honolulu when it began experiencing turbulence, according to Honolulu EMS. The flight landed safely in Honolulu at about 10:50 a.m., according to a statement from Hawaiian Airlines.
Officials said paramedics and emergency medical technicians who responded to the scene treated 36 patients.
Jon Snook, Hawaiian Airlines COO, said during a press conference that 20 injuries have been recorded, and 13 people were transported to local hospitals, including three crew members. Seven of those injured were initially triaged as serious, and nine were triaged as minor, according to Jim Ireland, director of the Honolulu Emergency Services Department.
No one is in critical condition at this time, officials said.
Officials had said earlier Sunday that 11 patients were initially listed as in serious condition, while nine were listed as in stable condition.
They’re “grateful that it seems at this moment that none of those guests that were transported to [the] hospital are in critical condition,” Snook said.
Seats in the emergency exit row of a airplane are seen in an undated stock photo.
STOCK PHOTO/Fotoamp/Shutterstock
The youngest patient treated was 14 months old, according to Honolulu EMS.
Injuries included head lacerations, bumps, bruises and loss of consciousness, officials said, and several people experienced nausea and vomiting.
The seatbelt sign was on at the time of turbulence, Snook said. There was unstable air in the area but no warning that the particular patch of air was dangerous, officials said. Specifics on how much altitude was lost were not immediately available.
The flight crew declared an emergency and made a direct descent into the airport where emergency responders were staged, officials said.
This type of event is “very rare,” Honolulu EMS Director Jim Ireland said.
There were 278 passengers and 10 crew members on board the flight, the airline said.
“We feel it’s fortunate that there were not any deaths or other critical injuries,” Ireland said. “And we’re also very hopeful that all will recover and make a full recovery, and our thoughts are with all of them and their families. It was a team response today.”
The FAA is investigating the incident, the agency said. The National Transportation Safety Board will also be involved in the investigation, officials said.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Alex Stone contributed to this report.
Mysterious life forms discovered in centuries-old Hawaiian lava caves
Hundreds of years ago, the volcanic processes that created the islands of Hawaii also formed a network of underground tunnels and caves.
They’re cold, dark and full of toxic gases and minerals. So, pretty much inhospitable to most forms of life.
However, scientists have discovered these volcanic vents actually contain sprawlingly complex colonies of microbes.
These are the smallest known living organisms on Earth and we really don’t know much about them at all.
In fact, estimates suggest that 99.999 per cent of all microbe species remain unknown. As a result, some refer to these mysterious life forms as ‘dark matter’.
Yet they still make up a huge amount of Earth’s biomass.
What’s got the experts so interested in Hawaii’s lava caves is that the conditions there are as close as you might get to those of the Mars or other distant planets.
And if microbes can survive in these 600 – 800 year old lava tubes, we might just find some on Mars at some stage.
Researchers found that older lava caves, dating back more than 500 years, typically contained a more diverse population of microbes.
Therefore, they believe it takes a long time for these tiny little creatures to colonise the volcanic basalt. As the environment changes over the eons, so does their social structure.
When the caves are younger and still more active, they microbes colonies are closer together in terms of species.
‘This leads to the question, do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities, with microorganisms more dependent on each other?’ said microbiologist Rebecca Prescott from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
‘And if so, what is it about extreme environments that helps to create this?’
Although there’s plenty we don’t know, the scientusts suspect that competition is a stronger force in harsher environments.
‘Overall, this study helps to illustrate how important it is to study microbes in co-culture, rather than growing them alone (as isolates),’ Prescott added.
‘In the natural world, microbes do not grow in isolation. Instead, they grow, live, and interact with many other microorganisms in a sea of chemical signals from those other microbes. This then can alter their gene expression, affecting what their jobs are in the community.’
The findings of the study have been published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
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Ancient Microbial “Dark Matter” – Thousands of Unknown Bacterial Species Discovered in Hawaiian Lava Caves
Steve Smith in a Hawaiian cave passage filled with roots of the Kaʻu district on the Island of Hawai`i. Credit: Kenneth Ingham
Centuries-Old Lava Caves of Hawaiʻi Island Contain Thousands of Unknown Bacterial Species
Higher bacterial diversity than scientists expected has been uncovered in the lava caves, lava tubes, and geothermal vents on the big island of Hawaiʻi. The findings have been reported in a new study published today (July 21, 2022) in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
This research investigates the variety and interactions within these microbial ecosystems, which illustrate how life may have existed on
“This study points to the possibility that more ancient lineages of bacteria, like the phylum Chloroflexi, may have important ecological ‘jobs,’ or roles,” said first author Dr. Rebecca D Prescott of 
Thick microbial mats hang under a rock ledge in steam vents that run along the Eastern Rift Zone on Hawaiʻi Island. Credit: Jimmy Saw
The harshest conditions—the geothermal sites—were expected to have lower diversity than the more established and habitable lava tubes. While the diversity was indeed found to be lower, the team of researchers was surprised to discover that the interactions within these communities were more complex than in locations with higher diversity.
“This leads to the question, do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities, with microorganisms more dependent on each other?” said Prescott. “And if so, what is it about extreme environments that helps to create this?”
Since Chloroflexi, and another class called Acidobacteria, were present at nearly all of the locations, they may play essential roles in these communities. However, these were not the most abundant bacteria, and the individual communities from the different sites showed large variations in the diversity and complexity of the microbial interactions. Counterintuitively, the most abundant groups, Oxyphotobacteria and Actinobacteria, were not often ‘hub’ species, suggesting that their roles may be less important to the overall structure of the community.
More questions than answers
Since the current study was based on the partial sequencing of one gene, it cannot accurately determine the species of microbes or their ‘jobs’ in the community. Therefore, further research is needed to help reveal the individual species that are present, as well as to better understand these bacteria’s roles in the environment.
A stalactite formation in a Hawaiian cave system from this study with copper minerals and white microbial colonies. Despite the fact that copper is toxic to many organisms, this formation hosts a microbial community. Credit: Kenneth Ingham
“Overall, this study helps to illustrate how important it is to study microbes in co-culture, rather than growing them alone (as isolates),” said Prescott. “In the natural world, microbes do not grow in isolation. Instead, they grow, live, and interact with many other microorganisms in a sea of chemical signals from those other microbes. This then can alter their gene expression, affecting what their jobs are in the community.”
Beyond the insights about past, or even future, life on Mars, bacteria from volcanic environments can also be useful in understanding how microbes turn volcanic rock (basalt) into soils, as well as bioremediation, biotechnology, and sustainable resource management.
Reference: “Islands Within Islands: Bacterial Phylogenetic Structure and Consortia in Hawaiian Lava Caves and Fumaroles” by Rebecca D. Prescott, Tatyana Zamkovaya, Stuart P. Donachie, Diana E. Northup, Joseph J. Medley, Natalia Monsalve, Jimmy H. Saw, Alan W. Decho, Patrick S. G. Chain and Penelope J. Boston, 21 July 2022, Frontiers in Microbiology.
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.934708
Funding: NASA Headquarters, George Washington University