Hawaii, as an archipelago with no road routes between the islands, is reliant on 2 main ways of getting from one to another: airplane or boat. Regarding air services, this is a niche that Hawaiian Airlines and Mokulele Airlines, along with Aloha Airlines in the past have filled, serving communities whose primary link to the outside world is via their local airport. Mokulele Airlines serves pretty much every Hawaiian airport that you can squeeze a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan into, connecting major airports like Honolulu, Kahului, Kona, and Lihue with places like Molokai, Lania, and Waimea.
Server: Solo
Airline: Mokulele Airlines (Operated by Southern Airways Express)
Aircraft: Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX
Origin: Molokai Airport, Molokai, Hawaii (MKK)
Destination: Kahului Airport, Maui, Hawaii (OGG)
Flight Number: 9X876
Route: PHMK-PHOG
Seat: 1A (Just guessing; I couldn’t find a seat map for Mokulele)
Time En Route: 45 Minutes
Walking out to our aircraft. Although these are operated by Southern Airways Express, they retain the Mokulele branding. In the past, Mokulele partnered with Shuttle America, operating Embraer E170s, and Mesa Airlines, operating CRJ-700s. Needless to say, operating those aircraft on such short routes was not profitable in the long term, and these partnerships respectively dissolved fairly rapidly.
Leaving the passenger ramp at MKK
Holding short of the runway. The largest aircraft ever to regularly serve Molokai was Aloha Airlines’s 737-200s, which squeezed into a strip less than 5,000 feet long.
FRIENDLY 876 departing, seeya!
Climbout from Molokai
Passing over Lanai Airport in cruise
Final descent into beautiful OGG
Landing in Maui
Clear of the runway and taxiing to the commuter ramp, almost exclusively used by Mokulele
Deplaned while our tiny little Cessna gets turned around for the return trip to Molokai