$50,000 to Fly to Hawaii?
With all the talk of the problems airlines are having with the high fuel costs, I began to wonder what it costs to fly an airliner to Hawaii. I decided to do a little research, here’s what I found. I’m going to use Hawaiian Airlines non-stop flight from Oakland California to Honolulu as an example. Hawaiian Airlines flies Boeing 767-300’s on this route. Average flight time is about 5 hours.
A 767-300 burns about 2200 gallons of jet fuel per hour, so it will use about 11,000 gallons for the flight. At $4 per gallon that’s $44,000 just for the fuel.
According to the FAA other costs (maintenance and so on) to operate the aircraft were about $1100 per hour in 2004. Using that figure it adds another $5,500 to the cost of our flight.
Adding it up we see the cost to fly the 767 from Oakland to Honolulu is about $50,000.
At a full load of 230 passengers the cost per seat for the flight is about $217 one-way or $434 round-trip, just for the aircraft. Overhead is a whole different matter.
Still wonder why you can’t find those cheap seats to the Islands anymore?
Photo Credit: Boeing