Hawaiian Airlines orders two Boeing 787s while deferring deliveries

Hawaiian Airlines ordered two additional Boeing 787s, supplementing its previous order for 10 aircraft of the type. However, the carrier has also deferred the first delivery by at least a year, reducing its capital expenditures for 2022.

The pair of wide-body jets were added to the previous order with a supplemental agreement with Boeing, per Hawaiian Airlines’ filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 4, 2022.

According to the filing, the now-12 aircraft will be delivered between Q4 2023 and 2027. Previously, the first Boeing 787-9 from the initial order was scheduled to arrive in Q4 2022, but the airline agreed with the manufacturer to delay deliveries of the aircraft by at least a year.

As such, Hawaiian Airlines has managed to cut its 2022 capital expenditure from approximately $120 to $135 million to approximately $45 to $60 million. The original order for the 10 Boeing 787-9s dates back to March 2018, when the airline and Boeing signed a Letter of Intent (LoI), which was finalized in July 2018, according to the Hawaiian carrier’s Q3 2018 SEC filing. The airline initially ordered six Airbus A330-800neo aircraft with an option to purchase up to six more but canceled that order in February 2018, repaying Airbus “concessions received relating to a prior firm order, training credits, as well as forfeit the pre-delivery progress payments made towards the flight equipment”.

“We were in the enviable position of choosing between two outstanding models for our flagship aircraft of the future and I couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of adding the Dreamliner to Hawaiian’s fleet,” said Peter Ingram, the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hawaiian Airline at the time of the original 787 order in March 2018.

“The Dreamliner combines excellent comfort for our guests with fantastic operational performance and will allow us to continue modernizing our fleet into the next decade,” Ingram added, noting that the 787 would have more seating capacity than its current wide-body aircraft.

Currently, the Honolulu Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)-based airline does not have any Boeing 787s in operation. The carrier’s only wide-body aircraft are 24 Airbus A330-200s that are, on average, 9.6 years old, according to planespotters.net data.