Hawaiian Airlines Begins Climb Back to Health
Like most of its peers in the U.S. airline industry, Hawaiian Holdings (NASDAQ: HA) rang up another sizable loss last quarter. While the Hawaiian Airlines parent reported a 22% sequential increase in revenue to $182 million, its adjusted net loss increased by about 10% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, reaching $191 million. Nevertheless, the airline's results and outlook finally point to the beginning of a sustainable recovery.
Like other airlines, Hawaiian Airlines experienced a big uptick in demand in February as the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rollout gave people more confidence to book travel. However, the effect was even more dramatic for Hawaiian than for mainland-based airlines that had been able to redeploy capacity to regions with higher demand (such as Florida and the Rockies) earlier in the pandemic.
Indeed, Hawaiian Airlines' load factor -- the percentage of seats filled with paying customers -- roughly doubled on North America-Hawaii routes between January and March. Furthermore, whereas ticket sales were very weak in January, bookings have exceeded pre-pandemic levels by more than 10% since March. That has put the carrier on track to post higher load factors and average fares with each passing month. Management is cautiously optimistic that load factors could reach normal levels (around 90%) by the summer.
Source Fool.com
