HONOLULU – Hawaiian Airlines was granted tentative approval by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today to operate one daily flight between Honolulu and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

“We are delighted at the prospect of being able to start new service to Tokyo soon. This is exciting news for all of us at Hawaiian,” said Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian’s president and CEO. “We had applied for two round trips and remain convinced that our proposal would produce far greater benefits to competition than the other proposals and plan to ask the DOT to reconsider granting Hawaiian a second daily round trip.”

Hawaiian’s route application to DOT proposes twice-daily flights between Honolulu and Haneda International Airport starting in late October. Both of Hawaiian’s proposed daily flights are conveniently scheduled to depart Haneda shortly before midnight and arrive in Honolulu around noon the same day, allowing Tokyo-area travelers to depart after a full day of work and dinner and arrive in time to enjoy a first afternoon in Hawaii. The return flights would both depart Honolulu in early evening and arrive at Haneda around 10:00 p.m. the next day. (Tokyo is 19 hours ahead of Honolulu and the flight crosses the International Dateline.)

Hawaii’s largest and longest-serving airline plans to initially service the Honolulu-Tokyo flights with its Boeing 767-300ER aircraft seating up to 264 passengers, before adding its new and larger 294-seat Airbus A330-200 aircraft onto the route.

The Tokyo-Honolulu flights are a first step in Hawaiian’s long-term plan to expand its service in Asia and other international destinations using the 27 new Airbus A330s and A350s that the company expects to integrate into its fleet over the coming decade.

Hawaiian is well prepared to serve the Honolulu-Tokyo route. The company already offers a Japanese language website and has had a sales presence in Tokyo since 1973, and also previously operated the largest charter service between the U.S. and Japan in the 1980s and early 1990s.

About Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian is the nation’s highest-ranked carrier for service quality and performance in 2009 in the 20th annual Airline Quality Rating study, having earned that distinction in three of the past four years. Hawaiian has also led all U.S. carriers in on-time performance for each of the past six years (2004-2009) and has been an industry leader in fewest misplaced bags during that same period (#1 from 2005-2007, #2 in 2008 and 2009) as reported by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Consumer surveys by Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure and Zagat have all ranked Hawaiian the top domestic airline serving Hawaii.

Now in its 81st year of continuous service for Hawaii, Hawaiian is the state’s biggest and longest-serving airline, as well as the largest provider of passenger air service to Hawaii from the state’s primary visitor markets on the U.S. mainland. Hawaiian offers nonstop service to Hawaii from more U.S. gateway cities (10) than any other airline, as well as service to the Philippines, Australia, American Samoa, and Tahiti. Hawaiian also provides more than 150 daily jet flights between the Hawaiian Islands.

Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. is a subsidiary of Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: HA).