KITV4: Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines CEOs discuss merger at Chamber of Commerce Hawaii lunch

HONOLULU (Island News) — The anticipated merger of Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines will give local residents more travel options. That’s one of the topics that came out of a Chamber of Commerce Hawaii luncheon in which the CEOs of both airlines updated the business community on air travel.

Alaska Airlines CEO and President Ben Minicucci addressed the big drama right away. The door plug incident on that now infamous Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5 that resulted in a three-week grounding of 737 MAX 9s everywhere.

“We were focusing on a lot of things and did not expect the Max 9 event to happen. For those of you following the news, that was a really tough event for our company,” Minicucci shared.

And Hawaiian Airlines President and CEO Peter Ingram talked about the planned merger of Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines.

“We’ve got a couple important things that have to happen before we can combine. On the Hawaiian side, our shareholders have to vote on the deal. We’re in the middle of soliciting votes for the shareholder votes in the middle of February,” he listed.

The other approval is for the competition authorities, largely the Department of Justice, to approve the merger to make sure it does not violate antitrust laws or regulations. Ingram said it should take about six months.

He also said the last few years – particularly due to COVID-19 – were hard for Hawaiian, but before Alaska approached them to merge, they were working on their own plan to recover and compete as an independent carrier.

“Plan A, and I insisted we had a Plan A until we had a deal, was that we operate as a carrier with our standalone plan, and we complete our recovery from the challenges of the last couple years. Plan B was getting the deal approved with Alaska,” continued Ingram. 

Minicucci said he believes the merger will prevail.

Ingram agreed but said, “You know, we weren’t shopping for a buyer in 2023,” so even if the merger doesn’t get approved by the DOJ, Ingram said he is confident Hawaiian will remain viable.

See the article from KITV here.