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

Wednesday - June 28, 2006

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With wife Lisa and children Jacob
and Jessica

There are few more polarizing people in Hawaii this year than John Ornstein, CEO of the new go! airlines.

To some he is the savior of inter-island travel, reuniting long separated family and friends with $39 flights that everyone can afford.

To others he is a cutthroat haole businessman here to crush Aloha Airlines with his predatory pricing, putting thousands out of work and setting his sights on Hawaiian next.

But when the rhetoric settles, we find he is just a businessman who saw a need and is trying to fill it, and if the other airlines can’t handle it, then so be it.

“We looked at the market and we saw it wasn’t possible for most people, local people, to fly when it’s $200 roundtrip for a 15-minute flight,” says Ornstein from his offices in the commuter terminal at Honolulu International. “It was ridiculous.

With low fares and deep pockets, Jonathan
Ornstein and go! are sitting pretty

“They (other airlines) are upset because there is competition. Well hell, that’s what happens in the marketplace when you charge fares that are significantly above what would regularly be considered compensatory.”

While it may be ruffling feathers with the other inter-island carriers, the local reception to the fledgling airline has been better than predicted. In the first 10 days of business it has been carrying an 80 percent load factor (translated: okoles in seats) when it had only hoped for 55 percent.

Perhaps even more important than big sales for a new business is the reaction of those onboard.

“My crew tells me how they are getting thanked every day, and that just doesn’t happen in this business,” says Ornstein with a laugh. “On the first day, I had a mother come up to me and say she was taking her sons to see their cousins for the first time in five years because before it would have cost her $1,000 to do it.”

Despite criticisms that the prices are just stunts to choke out the cash-starved Aloha Airlines, Ornstein says the prices are here to stay. They may not stay at $39, but he doesn’t see them as getting much higher than $69.

“We intend to keep low fares; this is not a gimmick,” says Ornstein. “Southwest did not establish itself as the low-fare airline by offering low prices for a month than raising their fares. We want to be the low-fare airline of Hawaii.”

The reason it can do this is by focusing on the local customers rather than the connecting flights - or code sharing, as it’s known in the industry - from major airlines. Most regional carriers work in conjunction with the airlines, transporting people from the major hubs to smaller, regional airports.

For the work, the smaller airlines get just a small part of the ticket price, around $35. The rest of the seats are sold at a premium to make up for the lost revenue.

Code sharing is how Ornstein’s parent company, Mesa Airlines, has become the second biggest regional carrier in America, through its partnerships with big boys like Delta and United. But he took this philosophy and

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