Tourism to Maui has not been the same since, in August 2023, a series of spreading wildfires lay waste to many parts of the island and completely destroyed the historic town of Lahaina.
While the flow of tourists picked up even before rebuilding efforts got underway, the numbers have been lower than in past years. Many sun-seekers have been picking other tropical destinations or other islands in Hawaii amid initial messages to stay away from local authorities and later uncertainty about what was open and what was safe. Socialite Paris Hilton became the subject of a social media uproar after continuing with a family vacation to Maui even as local rescue workers were still recovering bodies and cleaning up destroyed infrastructure from the wildfires.
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Launching a flight between Los Angeles and Maui’s Kahului International Airport (OGG) in 2021, Southwest Airlines (LUV) ended up cutting the route indefinitely amid lower demand for travel to the island. Initially seen through the data on plane-tracking platform Cirium, the cut was later confirmed by the airline to travel websites Simple Flying and The Points Guy.
Maui is a popular vacation destination for surfers.
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Southwest cuts flights from Los Angeles but these other routes are still available
Southwest will still continue to serve Hawaii quite extensively, running flights to Maui from Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Oakland, Sacramento and San Jose in California as well as routes to Honolulu from Los Angeles and at least five other West Coast cities. The Honolulu flight is the airline’s only route to the state from Los Angeles.
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When it comes to the Los Angeles-Maui route, Southwest has run a peak number of flights during the holiday period and has slowly been bringing them down since. The airline ran 62 flights between LAX and OGG in December 2023 which then turned into 46 in January and 42 in February.
A total of 46 flights is scheduled for March while only 28 will take place in April; the last flight will take place on April 20.
These are the routes that Southwest plans to run instead
While Southwest has not formally announced that it is canceling the route, it is disappearing from its schedule with no restart date in mind.
“We fully intend to fly nonstop between LAX and Maui as the post-fire dynamic supports the additional demand,” the airline said in a statement. “As Hawaii’s second-largest air carrier with 60 inter-island flights a day, and service from eight mainland gateways, we’re focused on supporting the community with relevant air service.”
The Boeing 737 Max 8 (BA) that the airline used for the Maui flight will be redirected to other routes. In the fall, Southwest is adding new flights between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) and Eppley Airfield (OMA) in Nebraska’s Omaha beginning in November as well as new routes between Baltimore and Richmond and Phoenix and Des Moines.
In February, the airline also announced a number of new tropical routes that it will start running in the fall when the sun-seeking period begins — to Cancun from Atlanta, Phoenix and San Antonio as well as a new flight between Austin and Cabo San Lucas.
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