Will Aloha Airlines’ contract services unit shut down?

The Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin reported this morn­ing that the last remain­ing busi­ness unit of bank­rupt Aloha Air­lines may shut down as early as today. I men­tioned yes­ter­day in this billso.com arti­cle that Aloha had shut down its air cargo busi­ness Monday.

If the con­tract ser­vices busi­ness does shut down, pas­sen­ger flights on the fol­low­ing car­ri­ers may be sus­pended and thou­sands of pas­sen­gers will might be stranded in the State of Hawaii:

• Amer­i­can Airlines
• US Air­ways
• Japan Air­lines
• Air Canada
• Korean Air
• China Airlines

Aloha’s ser­vices unit pro­vided gate agents, bag­gage ser­vices and ground per­son­nel for these and other air­lines. Out­sourc­ing these func­tions to Aloha helped these air­lines reduce or elim­i­nate their pay­rolls in Hawaii

Pacific Air Cargo had made a bid to buy the con­tract ser­vices busi­ness, but the US Bank­ruptcy Court did not appoint a liq­ui­da­tion trustee yes­ter­day to super­vise the con­tract ser­vices busi­ness. Kany of the 950 con­tract ser­vices employ­ees have decided to con­tinue work­ing with­out any guar­an­tee that they might be paid. The deal is set to close next Mon­day, 5 May 2008, but PAC is try­ing to advance that date, and the Hon­olulu Adver­tiser reported today that PAC may try to start its own inter­is­land air cargo business.

“I put the bur­den on all of our guys,” said Randy Kauhane, assis­tant gen­eral chair­man of Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists and Aero­space Work­ers, Dis­trict Lodge 141. “I told our guys to con­tinue to work for free if it means keep­ing the oper­a­tion going until we can find out more details what’s going to hap­pen. If we stop, it would inter­rupt the oper­a­tions of the car­ri­ers that we service.”

Last night, Hawaii Gov­erner Linda Lin­gle announced that she would not declare a state of emer­gency because of the Aloha cargo shut­down. I won­der what she will do if pas­sen­gers are stranded? The Star-Bulletin pub­lished a blis­ter­ing edi­to­r­ial this morn­ing, tak­ing Lin­gle and leg­isla­tive lead­ers to task for their inac­tion dur­ing the last month.

Mean­while, in another Star-Bulletin story, food ser­vices com­pa­nies and Kauai busi­nesses are ask­ing the state to help restore Super­ferry ser­vice to that island. A small and vocal group of pro­test­ers helped stop the ser­vice in August 2007:

Jimmy Tru­jillo, one of the orga­niz­ers of the anti-Superferry move­ment on Kauai, said the ves­sel still is not wanted.

“Aloha Air cargo is cer­tainly a val­ued ser­vice. Per­haps Aloha Air­lines should have been the ben­e­fi­ciary of a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion,” Tru­jillo said.

“The mil­i­tary cargo Stryk­er­ferry isn’t the vehi­cle to carry depleted ura­nium and baked goods,” he added.

Tru­jillo was not avail­able for fur­ther com­ment. Per­haps he has locked him­self in the Iolani Palace with approx­i­mately 70 other sov­er­eignty pro­test­ers who took over the grounds at 0530 this morn­ing.

Got bread?

Yesterday’s ship­ment of Love’s bread and baked goods for Lihue is still in Los Ange­les, because the con­tact ship­per used United to fly items to Kauai. United Air­lines has sus­pended its Kauai cargo ship­ments because the air­line used Aloha’s cargo busi­ness for its Lihue ground services.

Love’s is ship­ping bread to Maui on the Super­ferry, accord­ing to this Star-Bulletin article.

Tagged as: airline, airport, Aloha, cargo, Hawaii, Honolulu, Kauai, los-angeles, Maui, supply-chain, tourism, travel, value-chain