The “HA” code story already made the rounds, so we’ll skip the nostalgia. The more important shift just happened: Hawaiian is now fully running on Alaska’s passenger service system. That’s the backbone, reservations, check-in, app, everything.
At the same time, Hawaiian officially joined the oneworld alliance, expanding connectivity to nearly 1,000 destinations globally. At the Travel Weekly conference, Hawaiian Airlines CEO Diana Birkett Rakow painted a compelling picture of oneworld access, stronger tech, and a more generous loyalty program. Hard to argue with any of that.
But can the personality and culture of the airline survive when the guts are all Alaska?
It kind of reminds me of the OTA playbook. When Expedia acquired Travelocity (and Orbitz), it replaced everything, but the logos and some design to Expedia’s systems, and the brands slowly faded. On the flip side, Booking acquired Agoda and let them run independently on their own platform, and it flourished. Not saying that’s what happens here, but we’ve seen how this story can play out.
The Pualani tail still flies for now, but the operation behind it is now firmly Alaska’s.
