In a special meeting that took place last Friday, the stockholders of Hawaiian Holdings voted positively to move forward with the purchase agreement by Alaska Air Group, the parent holding of Alaska Airlines.
The sale, they detailed through a statement, obtained a “substantial majority” of the shareholders, and the final results will be published and communicated shortly to the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission).
“Stockholder approval of our transaction with Alaska is an important milestone toward combining our airlines,” said Hawaiian Airlines President and CEO Peter Ingram. “Together, we will bring stronger competition to the U.S. airline industry, deliver more value to our guests and the communities that we serve, and provide greater job opportunities for our employees.”
Aside from this positive progress, the integration process of Hawaiian with Alaska still has at least between 10 and 16 months ahead with key steps such as regulatory authority approvals.
The agreement between Hawaiian and Alaska had been announced last December, and was valued at 1.9 billion dollars, including 900 million dollars of the airline’s net debt from Hawaii.
The combination of Alaska Airlines, the fifth largest airline in the U.S., and Hawaiian Airlines will result in a fleet of 365 narrow and wide-body aircraft, connecting 138 destinations directly and more than 1,200 through the oneworld alliance. Honolulu will become an important connection hub, both for the residents of the islands as well as for transpacific connections to Asia.
The new company will again have a heterogeneous fleet: when Alaska bought Virgin America in 2016, it inherited a fleet of Airbus A319/A320/A321 that it was able to completely replace by September this year. Since then, the airline has returned to being an “all-Boeing” operator
With the acquisition, it will incorporate the Airbus A321neo and the Airbus A330 from the island airline. At one point, Hawaiian was one of the few operators that placed an order for the smaller variant of the A330neo, the -800, but canceled it in 2018.
