Environmental Stewardship

Hawaiian’s new fleet of A321neos blends unmatched fuel efficiency and comfort. Powered by Pratt & Whitney PurePower® Geared Turbofan™ engines and incorporating the latest in aerodynamics, the A321neo is the quietest and most fuel-efficient aircraft in its class, leading to 16 percent lower fuel burn and carbon emissions over previous generation aircraft.

As we look to our future, we are excited to soon welcome a new fleet of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners that use 20 percent less fuel than previous generation aircraft thanks to an innovative composite airframe and advanced technology.

Hawaiian is decreasing its reliance on jet fuel to power aircraft at the gate. Our initiative to connect parked aircraft to more efficient external electricity is significantly reducing pilots’ use of the onboard auxiliary power unit, or APU, which burns jet fuel to keep lights, avionics systems, air conditioning and other equipment on.

This ongoing effort has the potential to reduce Hawaiian’s APU usage by an estimated 30 minutes per flight, saving some 620,000 gallons of fuel annually and cutting CO2 emissions by 5,933 metric tons. That’s roughly enough fuel to fly the airline’s wide-body fleet for a day, while the carbon reductions equate to removing 1,253 cars off the roads each year.

In 2016, Hawaiian Airlines became the first carrier to operate a demonstration flight between Auckland and Honolulu showcasing best practices in operational performance that greatly reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions. Hawaiian’s Earth Day flight of 8 hours and 54 minutes saved 3,260 pounds of fuel, reducing carbon emissions by five metric tons, after adhering to seven environmental markers outlined by the Asia and Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions (ASPIRE), a group of worldwide aviation leaders dedicated to advancing environmental stewardship in the industry. The results equate to removing 154 cars from the road when annualized based on three weekly flights, according to EPA calculations (Hawaiian flies five times weekly between Honolulu and Auckland). Hawaiian also conducted an ASPIRE flight between Honolulu and Brisbane, resulting in similar benefits.

Our flight team seeks to use these strategies whenever possible. They include single-engine taxiing, adjusting routes for more efficient flying based on fuel optimization and forecast winds, and landing with minimal changes in engine thrust, among other efforts.

Hawaiian’s use of an innovative, eco-friendly engine washing technology earned us the first-ever aviation based carbon credits in 2012 for reducing its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 22,000 metric tons over a six-year period. Hawaiian’s reduction of CO2 emissions using Pratt & Whitney’s patented EcoPower engine washing system has had the equivalent effect of taking 700 cars off the road annually. Today, we include detergent in our engine washing to further boost our efficiency.

Each 5.5 pounds of weight we eliminate from aircraft operated on our transpacific routes translates to roughly one less ton of carbon emissions each year, so we slimmed down our serving carts and loaded our pilots’ flights plans on iPads instead of brick-heavy binders. Our flight crew also recycles cans, bottles and menus.

Travelers boarding one of our Airbus A330 aircraft on flights to and from the Hawaiian Islands are also helping to support an innovative research project to measure climate change and air quality worldwide. Hawaiian's partnership with the In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System (IAGOS) is the first of its kind for a U.S. carrier and gives scientists real-time access to pollution levels in vast expanses of the Pacific where air quality samples have been difficult to collect. Read more here.

On a broader level, Hawaiian has joined airline members of the International Air Transport Association in supporting policies to limit and reduce CO2 emissions from international aviation, including an aspirational goal of Carbon Neutral Growth aimed at keeping CO2 emissions at or below 2020 levels, an effort being led by the United Nation’s International Civil Aviation Organization.