Flight delays for Hawaiian Airlines that began Friday morning are continuing into Saturday as passengers at Lihue Airport await news to board their flight to Oahu as of 10 a.m.
One of those passengers, Scott Bly, was ready to return to Honolulu Friday night from Lihue. His 7:30 p.m. flight was continually delayed until it was finally canceled. He was forced to book a hotel room — at a cost of over $500 — and he’s not sure he'll be reimbursed.
“We saw the news (on Friday) and thought they'd all have it sorted by 7:30. And I think even the news article said it's been resolved, but it's clearly not the case,” Bly said as he waited at the gate Saturday morning.
According to Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the internet outage isn't due to Hawaiian Airlines' recent transition of its passenger service system. Instead, it's a result of a power disruption by Hawaiian Airlines' internet provider, DR Fortress, that's affecting Hawaii customers.
In the article, co-founder of DR Fortress, Rosa White, said the company had been “in the middle of a maintenance” and a “maintenance issue” had caused the outage.
On its website, DR Fortress says it’s Hawaii's “largest carrier-neutral data center and cloud marketplace” providing “network-neutral colocation and cloud services to enterprises, content companies, system integrators, carriers, wireless service providers, cable companies and ISPs.”
“We are stuck in Lihue with no info,” said a Hawaiian Airines passenger vacationing on Kauai with his parents. “Our connecting flight is also delayed two hours. Hawaiian Airlines has been overwhelmed and can't even communicate basic info.”
He added that the airplane is sitting at the gate, but the crews aren't available since the crew and pilots require a set time off. There's a trickle-down effect to all the delays he said.
Kim Connolly of Nebraska had an early morning flight that was delayed four hours.
She was due to meet her daughter and her boyfriend in Honolulu. They booked last-minute flights on Southwest and managed to arrive before Connolly.
“They've been sitting at the airport since,” Connolly said.
“We had a whole ceremony thing planned for my mom. She died last year. So we were all supposed to do that, and we had perfectly planned stuff we were supposed to do. So we had time to explore and do that thing from my mom. So we're like, what can we cut out now? Because we're not gonna have time. So it's kind of irritating.”