More planes (and more airplane seats) headed to the islands

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Airlines will bring 1,084,653 scheduled air seats to Hawaii in May.

That's up 12.4 percent — or by more than 100,000 additional seats — compared to the same time last year.

Most of the increase is for air traffic to the Neighbor Islands.

Oahu saw a 2.2 percent increase in scheduled air seat, while Kahului has 17 percent more seats and there are 61 percent more seats scheduled for Lihue and Kona.

Here's a look at data by airport:

► Honolulu: Oahu has 390,000 air seats from the U.S. mainland, plus 286,000 from international takeoff points, including 160,000 from Japan, 24,000 from Seoul, 24,000 from Sydney, 13,000 from Auckland, 12,000 from Guam and 11,000 from Vancouver.

► Kahului: Maui gets about 30,000 more air seats than last year, led by Portland airlift nearly doubling to 15,000, and smaller increases from other West Coast cities as well as Denver, Dallas and Chicago. Vancouver air capacity to Maui will rise slightly, to 7,700 seats.

► Kona: The airport is celebrating new flights from Portland and 11,000 more seats from the San Francisco Bay Area. And its Japanese air capacity will nearly double to almost 10,000 seats now that Japan Airlines has joined Hawaiian Airlines and is flying from Japan to the Big Island. Add to this more than 5,000 seats United Airlines flies into Hilo, 1,500 more than last year.

► Lihue: No one can be sure how much the recent floods will dampen the boom in Kauai visitor traffic, but five U.S. carriers are pumping almost 30,000 more seats into the corridor this month, including thousands more seats from San Francisco and Seattle and 13,000 more from LAX.

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