Mokulele Airlines serves as a lifeline for the Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi communities, especially for critical medical appointments and off-island work.
However, residents say they can no longer depend on Mokulele to get them there.
Airline executives are promising improvements are on the way. Mokulele has launched a new schedule that provides more time for each flight and in between flights so delays are less likely.
About $10 million in additional aircraft are coming to Hawaiʻi to provide backup and Mokulele is soon releasing an app that will help passengers track their incoming plane, provide flight updates, and make changes to their reservations.
March brought especially extensive delays and cancellations that left many passengers stranded. The airline blamed the weather and mechanical issues for these problems.
“A lot of the issues that we’ve seen in the month of March, most of them were cancels due to the horrific weather," said Keith Sisson, the chief marketing officer of Mokulele's mainland parent company Southern Airways.
"Eight of the first 15 days of March, [there were] a lot of cancels, near gale force winds, very bad visibility where we had multiple flights that simply had to turn around and go back to Honolulu because they could not land on Molokaʻi," Sisson said.
But residents have been reporting unreliable service for over a year. Molokaʻi state employee Kimberly Lani said five recent work trips have been canceled due to Mokulele.
“Now, for a lot of people, the trend is, 'Go a day early.' So the burden is placed on us, we already have a burden of living here without things. But what are we going to do? I don’t have the luxury of going a day prior," Lani said.
For resident Arabella Ark, a time-sensitive surgery was delayed two weeks due to repeated flight cancellations.
Then she missed her scheduled appointment when her flight left seven hours late. Luckily her doctor stayed late to see her, and Ark was booked on a 7 p.m. flight back home to Moloka'i — that didn’t take off.
“All flights are canceled. There were about 50 people waiting to come to Moloka'i and Lānaʻi. The airline just shuts down, they turn off the lights, everybody leaves, there’s no transportation, no hotel, no food, nothing. And they say just rebook your flight," Ark said.
She paid for a hotel and change fees and rescheduled her flight for 7 a.m. the next day. She didn’t leave the Honolulu terminal until 3:30 p.m.
“Three people were in wheelchairs, sitting in the lounge, and one of the Molokaʻi fellows says, ‘I’m diabetic and I thought I was going home yesterday, I didn’t bring enough medicine.’ … The guy sitting next to me had had a stroke and that’s why he was coming home, he had just gotten out of the hospital, there was another person who had had a heart attack. All of us were supposed to go out on a Wednesday night, we finally went out on a Thursday late afternoon," she said.
Richard Schuman, Mokulele executive vice president, gives out his personal cell number to Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi residents for emergencies.
From a Lānaʻi family needing a flight to see their dying father, to a Molokaʻi woman in labor with no emergency flights available, Schuman has worked to help many in a tight spot.
“We were able to do something special and out of the ordinary for them — we don’t believe very many airlines in the country would be able to do something like that.” Mokulele has been the only airline serving Molokaʻi since 2021.
A bill for a two-year state subsidy program to help offset the cost of flights to Molokaʻi has passed the Senate and is making its way through House hearings.
In the meantime, Molokaʻi residents say they’ll believe the promised improvements when they see them.
