Alaska Air Group has announced plans to invest $600 million over the next five years to modernize infrastructure and improve the guest experience in Hawaii. As I see it, there’s one part of this announcement that’s most exciting (and overdue).
Hawaiian Airlines A330s getting full cabin refresh
Hawaiian Airlines’ fleet of Airbus A330s are expected to get major cabin upgrades. The airline has 24 of these A330-200s, and they’re an average of around 13 years old. The plan is for the planes to get a tip-to-tail makeover:
- The current 2-2-2 fully flat business class seats will be replaced by business class suites (the airline often markets this as first class rather than business class, given that these planes largely fly domestically, but that also causes some confusion)
- The A330s will be getting a premium economy cabin, which they don’t currently have
- The A330s will be getting big tech upgrades, including new high definition seat back monitors, and bluetooth audio, complementing the Starlink Wi-Fi that these planes already have
- The A330s will be getting new seats in economy, as well as new carpets and lighting
The catch? This work will only start in 2028, so it’ll be at least two years before the first plane is refreshed, and who knows what happens to that timeline, and how long the entire project will take.
Exact details beyond this remain to be seen, including how many seats each A330 will have once it’s in a three-cabin configuration, along with what types of seats the airline will have. Keep in mind that Hawaiian’s Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners have Adient Ascent suites in business class. However, these are seats that are exclusively intended for the Dreamliner, so I suspect the airline will choose a different product for the A330s.
The long term plan is for all 787s to get Alaska branding and fly out of Seattle (SEA), so the airline group can create a global hub there. Meanwhile the A330s will maintain Hawaiian branding, and will continue to fly out of Honolulu (HNL).
I’m curious to see how the Hawaiian A330 strategy evolves
With Alaska Air Group having recently acquired Hawaiian Airlines, we’re seeing just about everything change. When Alaska first launched long haul service out of Seattle, the airline operated these flights with A330s, though they have a very uncompetitive product (at least when you’re competing with Delta and top Asian carriers).
So while Alaska Air Group had committed to refreshing A330s, the airline hadn’t provided a timeline, or any exact details, until now. I’m delighted to see that these planes will finally get new interiors, though we’ll have to be very patient.
Currently, Hawaiian’s A330s are used for a combination of mainline flights, along with flights to Asia and the South Pacific. Updated interiors aren’t really needed to compete between Hawaii and the mainland, though it’ll certainly make the airline more competitive in international markets where it competes with other airlines.
I still can’t help but wonder what the bigger long term strategy is in terms of integrating Hawaii’s geography into the overall Alaska Air Group network, and making Hawaiian’s network more profitable. Seattle has great geography for flying across the northern part of the Pacific, while Honolulu has great geography for flying across the southern part of the Pacific.
Is the long term plan just business as usual, or to increasingly build a South Pacific network that includes routing people from the mainland via Honolulu?
Bottom line
Alaska Air Group has announced plans to reconfigure the cabins of all Hawaiian Airbus A330s as of 2028. The planes will get updates across cabins, including new business class suites, the introduction of premium economy, and high definition seat back entertainment without bluetooth audio throughout the plane.
These updates are most definitely needed, and I look forward to learning more.
What do you make of these plans for Hawaiian’s A330s?
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