Originally Posted by
e6bpilot
Max 7 to HI is going to be great since now you will have 150 seat planes doing low load inter island in between crossings and more max 8 freed up to do the crossings. I don't think it's going to open up any mountain time zone Hawai'i flying, though (PHX notwithstanding 4 months of the year).
I don't think it'll work out that way (max-7s doing all the interisland) due to what the repeated short hops apparently do to the motors. I could be mis-remembering but I read something about how those short hops are unusually bad for the motors due to nasty heating/cooling cycles on repeated short legs. If MX didn't have a contractual lock that prevents it (their version of section 1 scope), we'd have been better off ferrying a dozen -700s over to do nothing but inter-island. But we can't so we won't. And each individual -7 will only be able to do a day or two interisland before they have to send it back conus just to save the motors from early overhaul. My prediction is they'll spread the pain across the whole fleet, using all types for inter-island.