Two planes bound for Kahului Airport on Friday were forced to divert to Honolulu after a temporary internet outage impacted Hawaiian Airlines systems and headquarters in Hawaii.
Hawaiian Airlines experienced the outage at about 9 a.m. Friday due to a power disruption at the airline’s third-party data vendor during scheduled maintenance, according to External Communications Manager Tara Shimooka. The outage was resolved on Friday morning, but the airline anticipated flight delays while the vendor worked to fully restore service.
“The system outage has caused significant delays in our neighbor island and transpacific flight operations as we were unable to dispatch flights between 9 a.m. through noon today,”Shimooka said via email on Friday afternoon. “Two Kahului-bound flights from the West Coast also diverted to HNL due to space constraints at OGG. We are still working through the impacts to our operations and concentrating our efforts on resuming our flight schedule and safely getting our guests to their destinations.”
Hawaiian Airlines said that the outage was linked to the power disruption by internet provider DR Fortress and was unrelated to its recent passenger service system transition.
Maui Airports District Manager Marvin Moniz said Friday afternoon that the outage caused gate issues at Kahului Airport, as multiple aircraft that were already on Maui were grounded and couldn’t leave. Initially, four Kahului-bound flights from the Mainland had to be diverted to Honolulu because of a lack of gate space.
“But before they got to Honolulu, we were able to get some gates open as the computer system started coming back online,”Moniz explained. “We were able to accommodate majority of them except two that went to Honolulu.”
Once the system was back up, it was only a matter of loading the airplanes and getting them out, Moniz said. Because multiple planes were already grounded and waiting at Kahului, that helped reduce the delays, he said.
Other airlines weren’t impacted for the most part because the outage happened early in the day.
“They all got their share of gates,”Moniz said of the airlines operating at Kahului. “Sometimes they bleed over on each other, but I think it happened early enough in the day that that many flights weren’t here just yet, especially the Mainland arrivals.
“There were interruptions for sure, but I think if it extended further through the day, we would’ve been in more trouble than we were.”
He said travelers flying with Hawaiian Airlines on Saturday should check with the airline on their flight status, as some aircraft leaving late to the Mainland on Friday and returning Saturday morning may need to make adjustments due to crew rest requirements.
* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com
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