The First Alohajets: BACs in Hawaii

Air travel to Hawaii was booming in the 1960s off the back of non-stop jet services from the US West Coast and the island chains new found statehood. Aloha's F27s had proven excellent but were now too small and the movement everywhere was towards service with jets. Aloha too wanted jets but as a small intra-state airline it had to traverse a few bumps before it could get them.

Aloha was doing well but being only a small airline it struggled to compete with the major players who were busy sucking up jet production for years to come. To get around this it looked instead to the second-hand market were prop-jets could be acquired as the first line airlines replaced them with pure jets.

In 1963 Aloha introduced a trio of Vickers Viscounts. Two were ex-Austrian Airlines 745Ds and the other was an ex-Capital 798. The Viscounts seated 56 but the aircraft were not a success with either passengers or crew. The pilots complained that the Viscount 'flew like a truck' and was 'grossly underpowered'. These are interesting comments since I am unware of other Viscount operators sharing the opinion and it certainly had no effect on the type's success. The passengers were unhappy for more understandable reasons - the high capacity layout made the type cramped.

Even if the Viscounts had been a success they were only ever a short term option and Hawaiian had itself acquired some anyway to even the score. The BAC One-Eleven was proving a decent seller for BAC and had managed to break the US market already when Aloha came calling. It was ahead of similar US short-haul jets which gave it an early advantage and Aloha ordered two series 200s with a third option in March 1965. It was hoped that the jets would give Aloha an advantage over its bitter rival Hawaiian. The first One-Eleven arrived in Hawaii on April 15, 1966 - N11181 'Queen Kapiolani'.

The One-Elevens were immediately up against Hawaiian's choice of jet, the Douglas DC-9-15 which had started service the month before. Aloha's One-Elevens seated 79 passengers and despite suffering weight restrictions at some airports in the network Aloha was happy enough to convert the third option into a firm order and take two more options. This aircraft was delivered in May 1967 as N11183 'Queen Kaahumanu'.

Aloha was operating its first aircraft on an average of 20 sectors a day - many of the sectors being less than 25 minutes long. Unfortunately the promising start for Aloha's One-Elevens wasn't to last. Hawaiian was able to upscale its Dc-9 orders to the larger series 32 giving it a major capacity advantage whilst BAC prevaricated over a stretched variant of the One-Eleven. Plus the weight restrictions at places like Kona further disadvantaged the British type. Aloha switched allegiance to the newly offered Boeing product the 737 - the first of which arrived in January 1969.

The new 737s quickly replaced the One-Elevens which were all sold by mid-1969. In fact the unpopular Viscounts actually lasted longer in the Aloha fleet. Switching to the larger 737s however almost killed Aloha as it came at a time of a decrease in demand and delayed services to Hawaii from a number of major US airlines. It got so bad that Hawaiian and Aloha almost merged until the former reneged on the deal figuring Aloha was doomed anyway. Against the odds Aloha survived but it was the 737 that would form the basis of its new fleet, not the BAC One-Eleven. Aloha's 3 One-Elevens all went to the successful One-Eleven operator Mohawk Airlines who was subsequently taken over by Allegheny and then became USAir. All three lasted in service in the USA until 1988/89.

References

Wood, Bill. 1996. 50 Years of Aloha: The Story of Aloha Airlines
Hill, Malcolm L. 1999. BAC One-Eleven. Crowood Aviation Series