Originally Posted by AKCattleCarrier

"tell me you know nothing about HI flying" / "Tactical Operations" ....here it is again from a HA pilots. They seem to think that the inter-island is somehow a special operation. WE DO THE EXACT SAME THING RIGHT NOW. We do it everyday up and down SE Alaska, short hops, worse weather, more mountains, lots more snow, lots of wind, lots of freight, etc. Its literally the exact same thing, and it is roped into the non-SE AK 737 route structure all over the place. We don't have a seperate fleet dedicated to that flying. Is there some reason why the exact same concept can't work out there? It is what Alaska knows and it works. Pretty soon a 737 will go SEA - HNL, and instead of turning around and coming back to the west coast, it will turn and do 3-4 (5? yikes) stops inter-island, and then turn it to come back to the west coast. As soon as that routes established, you can retire your next 717 thats due for heavy check, and so on and so on. It will not take long before the 717 community is in a shrinking fleet with shrinking bidding options. I hadn't thought about the new hire thats forced to commute out to HNL and sit jr reserve on the 717. Seems like that is another terrific reason to begin the process of winding down this fleet immediately.