Hawaiian Airlines Takes Delivery of Third New A330-200

Hawaiian Airlines has taken delivery of its third new Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

The new 294-seat aircraft is named ‘Iwakeli‘i, the Hawaiian name for the constellation Cassiopeia, which can be seen in the northern sky and is distinguished by five bright stars forming a ‘W’ shape.

All of Hawaiian’s new A330s are being named for a star or constellation used by Polynesian voyagers for celestial navigation.

‘Iwakeli‘i is scheduled to begin service on 9 December 2010.

Like Hawaiian’s first two A330s that began operations in June, Makali‘i and Hokule‘a, ‘Iwakeli‘i will be used to operate flights connecting Honolulu with either Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

Hawaiian’s newest aircraft arrived 81 years to the day after the company forever changed the way people traveled between the Hawaiian Islands.

On 11 November 1929, Inter-Island Airways (renamed Hawaiian Airlines in 1941) launched Hawaii’s first-ever scheduled interisland air service using two Sikorsky S-38 amphibian propeller planes that carried eight passengers and two crewmembers, and had a top cruising speed of 110 mph.

The company’s inaugural flight from Honolulu to Hilo, with a stop on Maui, took more than three hours. The first flight to Kauai was made the following day and soon thereafter all the Hawaiian Islands were receiving air service on a regular basis.

Hawaiian plans to introduce up to 27 new Airbus aircraft into its fleet by the end of the decade. Along with the three A330s already in the fleet, Hawaiian has a purchase agreement with Airbus to acquire seven A330s (starting in 2011) and six A350XWB-800 (Extra Wide-Body) aircraft (starting in 2017), along with purchase rights for an additional five A330s and six A350s.

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