Molson Hart

Appears I may be wrong. The Iceland volcano was under ice and this somehow made it worse? Anyways, they’re still super concentrated in volatile Hawaii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption …

I didn't think of the volcano risk, but that seems true. I agreed about Hawaii being volatile. Won't an expensive vacation be the first thing people cut in a recession? On the other hand, they remained profitable during the financial crisis.

717s aren't produces anymore and are in limited supply. This seems like a lasting advantage. Southwest $LUV is finally trying to compete on these flights, but seems $HA still has an advantage.

The other difference is a direct flight to Hawaii generally will support just one route. If $HA specializes in figuring out these routes, they might be first creating the route. Once they're set up, seems unlikely people will compete with that direct flight, too.

And $HA is just *cheap*. To me this would be an obvious activist target... change management compensation to pay down debt in 1-2 years and then return money to shareholders ASAP until shares go up a lot. The entire company pays for itself in ~5 years at this price.

Many airlines offer flights to Hawaii from the major continental hubs. The intra-Hawaii business looks like the gem to me (no competition). Is that a material part of their business?

It's about 30% of their biz. Used to be ~50%. 1. Southwest just started trying to compete on some routes. That's bad. Jury is out if they stick around, though. 2. This part of their biz is shrinking relative to mainland/international flights. I hate that they grow.