It’s Time To Go!
With a stated goal of making inter-island air travel affordable for local folks again, Jonathan Ornstein and the new go! airlines are positioned for long-term success in Hawaii
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Ornstein at the check-in counter with, from left, Bette
Brumlow, Tiffany Stuart, Joe Bock and Kea Young
turned it on its ear for go! in Hawaii.
“My attitude is if I’m going to sell a ticket for $35, I’d rather do it locally than as a through-fare,” says Ornstein, who believes that moderate pricing across the board is much more fair to the local consumer.
“We don’t have a transPacific business that we are trying to support effectively off the local market. We aren’t interested in connecting passengers, we are here to offer reasonable rates to people traveling between the Islands.”
Maintaining an inter-island airline only has never been successful here, but Ornstein believes that with his philosophy and the $300 million that Mesa has in the bank, they can weather the volatility of starting up an airline and becoming a trusted brand in Hawaii.
That financial security is another reason critics cite when crying foul over go!. Many believe they are going to come in here like a certain superblock store and destroy all the little guys just struggling to survive.
“We are adding 5 percent to the market and people are comparing us to Wal-Mart,” says Ornstein with a shake of his head. “Wal-Mart comes in with a store 15 times bigger than its competition. We are one-15th the size of our competitors. It’s exactly the opposite.”
When looking at the numbers, it does seem a bit Chicken Little: go! has two 45-seat jets flying currently, with plans to have a whole five planes flying by the end of July.
When passengers walk out onto the tarmac to board go!‘s little converted corporate jets and they look over at the jumbo jets at the main terminal for Hawaiian and Aloha, it would seem that Ornstein should be the one who’s scared.
But that’s fine with him. He enjoys being the underdog. Back home in Phoenix, he plays in a basketball league with former college and NBA players where he is always the shortest and slowest guy on the court. His first taste of the airline industry was with Air LA, where he went from being financially successful in the securities market to baggage handling for a tiny airline.
He sold all his assets, moved from his big house into a tiny apartment and had to take a scooter to and from work. But the lessons he learned there got him a shot with the then-tiny carrier Mesa.
“We were like the Beverly Hillbillies in reverse,” says Ornstein. “We lost all our money and moved from the city to Farmington, N.M. I had all our stuff in the back of my soon-tobe father-in-law’s pickup truck tied down with a garden hose!”
Ornstein got his start in the airline business as a
baggage handler
There, partnered with Mesa founder Larry Risley, they took a tiny New Mexico carrier and grew its revenues from $11 million in 1987 to $350 million in 1994 through acquiring defunct airlines and making them profitable.
Ornstein left Mesa then for new challenges, overseeing the restructuring of Continental Express before meeting uber-entrepreneur Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines.
Branson tapped Ornstein to be CEO of his new Virgin Express in Belgium. It was to be a regional carrier for Europe, something most said was impossible.
“They all said you can’t have a regional airline in Europe because of the train,” says Ornstein, who spent three and half years in Belgium. “But you can if the flight is $59 and the train is $99.”
The success with Virgin inspired him for the go! idea. He and Risley had been talking about bringing an inter-island carrier to Hawaii since 1992 but had questioned whether the market could uphold three airlines.
Once they saw their competitors were maintaining 90 percent load factors, and combining that with additional fliers they could create due to the lower rates they knew now was the time.
Since coming out, Ornstein has had to slow down to become accustomed to Island lifestyle. Born and raised in New York City and cutting his business teeth in L.A. he is used to doing everything 100 mph.
To help him relax, a local tour group operator took him and the family to a beauty pageant at the Ilikai. They were more than a little surprised when they discovered it was a mahu pageant. E Komo Mai.
“We all enjoyed it; we are a pretty progressive family,” says Ornstein, who attended with his wife Lisa and kids Jessica and Jacob. “I was just bummed because I wish I could have been the judge!”
His wife has noticed the change in him from his first month in Hawaii.
“She told me I seemed so relaxed and I asked her why,” laughs Ornstein, who currently splits his time between L.A., Phoenix and Honolulu. “She told me because you are on the freeway and you are driving the speed limit.”
He may be relaxing a bit, but it is going to be an uphill battle for them against the other bigger carriers. For now though, the initial marriage of go! and locals seems to be going along swimmingly.
“As I told our board members back home, I’m just like a lot of people in Hawaii right now, enjoying our honeymoon.”
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